Chinese virologist claims coronavirus was made in lab, offers proof

Chinese virologist Dr Li-Meng Yan made the claims on 'Loose Women', a British talk show. (Photo Credit: YouTube ScreenGrab/Loose Women)#Coronavirus#China#Pandemic

Opoyicentral - 7 hours ago. New Delhi, Delhi, India

• Dr Li-Meng Yan was tasked with looking into a cluster of SARS-like cases in mainland China, last year in December
• She claims the novel coronavirus "is not from nature"
• She further claims the Wuhan seafood market acted as a "smokescreen"ByShubhangi Shah

Chinese virologist Dr Li-Meng Yan has claimed that the novel coronavirus "is not from nature" and is a lab-made virus. According to her, the Wuhan seafood market and the intermediate hosts for the virus were just a "smokescreen".

Dr Li-Meng, a top scientist in Hong Kong was in December, 2019, tasked with looking into a cluster of SARS-like cases coming out of mainland China. She became a whistleblower against the Chinese government over its handling of the pandemic and had to flee to the United States over safety concerns.

She made the claims on the British talk show 'Loose Women' on September 11.

The top scientist claimed that the Chinese government knew about the spread of the virus before publicly acknowledging it and that she discovered a cover-up operation.

She said she conducted two researches on the "new coronavirus" in China, one between December and early January and the other in mid-January. She shared the results with her supervisor, a World Health Organisation (WHO) consultant.

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She expected her supervisor to do the "right thing on behalf of the Chinese government and WHO" but to her surprise, she was told to "maintain silence or else she would be made to disappear."

"No one responded, people are scared of the government and they are waiting to collaborate with the government and WHO to get more benefits to become safe but this is [was] something urgent," the scientist said.

At the time of the Chinese New Year, an annual holiday, millions travel within and outside the country. So, she decided against keeping silent as "this is a high [highly] contentious dangerous virus. I mean, this is about human beings and global health."

She said she was facing threats but "I knew if I didn’t tell the world the truth I would be regretful."

So on January 17, she contacted a famous Chinese YouTuber based in the US. As per the expose, that was in Chinese, "the Chinese government was covering up the virus outbreak; human to human transmission of the disease already existed; SARS-CoV-2 is a "high mutant virus" that would become an outbreak soon; the Wuhan seafood market and the intermediate hosts for the virus acted as a 'smokescreen'."

And the most important, "this virus is not from nature. This is based on the China Military Institute that discovered and owned some bad coronavirus named CC45 and ZXC41. Based on that, after lab modification becomes a novel virus," the scientist said.

She dismissed reports that the virus originated from Wuhan's wet market, claiming her intelligence is "from the CDCs in China, from local doctors, doctors and other people around China."

The scientist said she has been working on a report since January, with a small group of top scientists and that she'll soon publish the findings.

"We are going to publish it. There are two reports, the first one will come in several days and it will tell people about the scientific evidence," she said.

Throwing light on the unpublished research, Dr Li-Meng said, "The genome sequence is like our human fingerprint. So, based on this you can recognise and identify this thing. I used the evidence existing in the genome sequence of Sars-CoV-2 to tell people why this came from China, why they are the only one who made it."

According to Dr Li-Meng, even those without  any knowledge of biology, can read it. "You can check, identify and verify it by yourself. It is the critical thing for us to know the origins of the virus. If not, it will be life-threatening for everyone," the virologist said