U.S. officials have “reason to believe” that Chinese researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology caught the novel coronavirus months before it developed into a pandemic, according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

“The United States government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses,” Pompeo said in Friday evening announcement. “This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was ‘zero infection’ among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses.”

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. . . . Pompeo’s statement amplifies U.S. suspicions that the contagion leaked out of a lab, a finding that would tend to reinforce the perception that the Chinese Communist government is to blame for the public health calamity.

“Despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution, the WIV has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military,” Pompeo added. “The WIV has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.”

In May, Pompeo declared that U.S. officials possessed “enormous evidence” that the pandemic originated in a Chinese laboratory, although he acknowledged this week that “we don’t know for sure” that it did. Chinese officials suggested in the early months of the pandemic that the virus emerged from a “wet market” where wild animal meat was sold, but Beijing’s envoys have also launched disinformation operations to blame the U.S. military or suggest that it began in another country.

[Pompeo warns] “until the CCP allows a full and thorough accounting of what happened in Wuhan, it is only a matter of time until China births another pandemic and inflicts it on the Chinese people, and the world.”

(Excerpt from Washington Examiner. Article by Joel Gerkhe.)

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