Empire Diaries Desk
May 6, 2020, New Delhi: US President Donald Trump insists that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is responsible for creating the #coronavirus and it was leaked from that lab, triggering the #pandemic.
The Chinese government insists it’s a “malicious lie”, and that the #Covid19 virus most likely came from animals in Wuhan’s Huanan animal market.
A huge diplomatic fight has broken out between China and America over the actual origin of the virus.
The laboratory at the centre of this storm, #WIV, has broken its silence. Its top professor has spoken to a western news outlet, clarifying that this coronavirus couldn’t have been artificially created and neither did the Wuhan-based lab had anything to do with it.
Professor Yuan Zhiming says: “These are malicious claims about the lab, they had been pulled out of thin air and they contradicted all available evidence.
“The WIV does not have the intention and the ability to design and construct a new coronavirus. Moreover, there is no information within the #SARS-CoV-2 genome indicating it was manmade.”
“More than 70% of emerging infectious diseases originated from animals, especially wild animals. In recent years, we have seen increasing risks posed by close contact between humans and wild animals, with global climate change and the continuous expansion of human activities.”
In the following days, as the China-US spat continued to escalate, the World Health Organization (WHO) backed China, ruling out the man-made theory. The WHO was also supported by the Angela Merkel administration in Germany.
