World News
US Has Evidence Researchers In Wuhan Lab Fell Ill Before Coronavirus Outbreak, State Department Says
… some U.S. officials and health experts have asserted that the virus could have accidentally leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The U.S. government has evidence that researchers at a laboratory in Wuhan, China, became sick in Fall 2019 with flu-like symptoms, raising concerns that they were infected with the novel coronavirus as the result of a lab accident, the State Department said Friday.
The agency said that the government still does not know the true origins of the coronavirus, which has caused more than 2 million deaths across the globe.
The prevailing theory, and one pushed by Chinese government officials, has been that the virus jumped from an animal to a human in Wuhan before spreading rapidly to other nations. But some U.S. officials and health experts have asserted that the virus could have accidentally leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
“The U.S. government does not know exactly where, when, or how the COVID-19 virus—known as SARS-CoV-2—was transmitted initially to humans. We have not determined whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, China,” reads the State Department fact sheet.