Dossier by Western Intelligence Agencies charge China with deliberate cover-up on bat virus program and subsequent leak

A research document prepared by several Intelligence Agencies of concerned Western Governments directly accuse China of negligence and deliberate cover-up of its controversial bat virus program which has now caused deaths of lakhs of people across the globe with millions suffering and world economy on tailspin due to lockdown. According to the dossier, China deliberately suppressed or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus outbreak in an “assault on international transparency” that cost tens of thousands of lives.

The 15-page dossier obtained by The Saturday Telegraph, states that to the “endangerment of other countries” the Chinese government covered-up news of the virus by silencing or “disappearing” doctors who spoke out, destroying evidence of it in laboratories and refusing to provide live samples to international scientists who were working on a vaccine, reports The Daily Telegraph. It can be recalled that doctors like Li Wenliang were shamed and few doctors like Ai Fen who revealed the source of the lab where Corona virus originated have since disappeared.

The dossier features the research of scientist Shi Zhengli as the source of the outbreak. Intelligence agencies are still investigating all angles as China has blocked access to any other governments to be part of the investigation. Organiser in an article had provided a detailed insight into the probable sources of Corona based on the investigation of Epoch Times which also suspected that the Corona virus was a result of a bio-weapon developed by China at its P4 laboratory in Wuhan by Shi Zhengli and team.

Dossier by Western Intelligence Agencies too cites the work of Shi Zhengli and team in discovering samples of coronavirus from a cave in the Yunnan province with striking genetic similarity to COVID-19, along with their research synthesising a bat-derived coronavirus that could not be treated. Its major themes include the “deadly denial of human-to-human transmission”, the silencing or “disappearing” of doctors and scientists who spoke out, the destruction of evidence of the virus from genomic studies laboratories, and “bleaching of wildlife market stalls”, along with the refusal to provide live virus samples to international scientists working on a vaccine.

Key figures of the Wuhan Institute of Virology team, who feature in the government dossier, were either trained or employed in the CSIRO’s Australian Animal Health Laboratory where they conducted foundational research on deadly pathogens in live bats, including SARS, as part of an ongoing partnership between the CSIRO and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

While US President Donald Trump has called for a thorough investigation into PRC’s role in the spread of the virus, the Australian government believes that there is a possibility that the virus accidentally leaked from a laboratory.

The Intelligence Agencies research document notes that a 2013 study conducted by a team of researchers, including Dr Shi, who collected a sample of horseshoe bat faeces from a cave in Yunnan province, China, which was later found to contain a virus 96.2 per cent identical to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused COVID-19. The research dossier also references work done by the team to synthesise SARS-like coronaviruses, to analyse whether they could be transmissible from bats to mammals. This means they were altering parts of the virus to test whether it was transmissible to different species. Their November 2015 study, done in conjunction with the University of North Carolina, concluded that the SARS-like virus could jump directly from bats to humans and there was no treatment that could help.

A “Sensitive but Unclassified” cable, dated January 19, 2018, obtained by The Washington Post, revealed that US embassy scientists and diplomats in Beijing visited the laboratory and sent warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety practices and management weaknesses as it conducted research on coronaviruses from bats. “During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of ­appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” the cable stated.

Though many in the Scientific community believe that the virus came from a wet-market, US’s top spy agency confirmed that the US intelligence committee is investigating whether COVID-19 was the result of an accident at a Wuhan laboratory.

South China University of Technology researchers published a study on February 6 that concluded “the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Safety level may need to be reinforced in high-risk biohazards laboratories”.

The Daily Telegraph reports that the Intelligence Agencies paper also speaks about “the suppression and destruction of evidence” and points to “virus samples ordered destroyed at genomics labs, wildlife market stalls bleached, the genome sequence not shared publicly, the Shanghai lab closure for ‘rectification’, academic articles subjected to prior review by the Ministry of Science and Technology and data on asymptomatic ‘silent carriers’ kept secret”.

The document reportebly depict how the Chinese government deliberately covered up the coronavirus by silencing doctors who spoke out, destroying evidence from the Wuhan laboratory and refusing to provide live virus samples to international scientists working on a vaccine. The demand from US and other countries for a live virus sample from the first batch of coronavirus cases has not been honoured by China.

The dossier also charges Chian with destruction of evidence and contant denials about the outbreak. The dossier also hints at the role of WHO in shielding China. The Daily Telegraph also reports that the papers exposes the hypocrisy of China’s self-imposed travel bans while it condemned travel restrictions imposed to and from China by other countries.

As Australian government calls for an independent inquiry into the pandemic, China has threatened to cut off trade with Australia. Last week China had threatened to stop medical supplies to Netherlands when the latter included Taipei in its Trade office name in Taiwan.