WASHINGTON, Jan 16, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
alleged Friday there were Covid-like illnesses among staff at a Chinese
virology institute in autumn 2019, casting further blame on Beijing as health
experts arrived in the country to probe the pandemic’s origins.
The top US diplomat in a statement urged the World Health Organization
team that landed Thursday in Wuhan, where Covid-19 was first detected, to
“press the government of China” on the “new information.”
“The United States government has reason to believe that several
researchers inside the (Wuhan Institute of Virology) 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.
He said this contradicted reports that none of the staff at the institute
had contracted Covid-19 or related viruses.
“Beijing continues today to withhold vital information that scientists
need to protect the world from this deadly virus, and the next one,” Pompeo
said.
Covid-19 was first detected in Wuhan in late 2019 and has since billowed
out across the world killing more than two million people so far, infecting
tens of millions and eviscerating the global economy.
The WHO says establishing the pathway of the virus from animals to humans
is essential to preventing future outbreaks.
The outgoing administration of Donald Trump has consistently blamed China
for Covid-19, which has killed 390,000 people in the United States, with the
president routinely calling it the “China virus.”
With five days left in his job, Pompeo has been striking out at his
primary targets of China, Iran and Cuba.
Earlier in the week, Pompeo alleged that Iran has become a new “home base”
for Al-Qaeda, an assertion mocked by Tehran and questioned by experts.