© AFP via Getty ImagesMedlemmer af en sunhedspolitihold, der sprøjter disinfektionsmiddel for at forebygge spredning af coronaviruset.
Et nationalt system til kontrol af biosikkerhedsrisici må bringes på plads for "at beskytte folks sundhed," sagde Xi, fordi laboratoriesikkerhed er et "nationalt sikkerhedsspørgsmål".
Xi indrømmede ikke at coronaviruset, der nu hærger store dele af Kina, var sluppet ud fra et af landets bioforskningslaboratorier. Men allerede næste dag kom der tegn frem, der tyder at det var præcist det, som skete, idet det Kinesiske Ministerium for Videnskab og Teknologi udgav et nyt direktiv med titlen: "Instruktioner om styrkelsen af biosikkerhedshåndteringen i mikrobiologilaboratorier der håndterer advancerede virus som novel coronavirus."
Kommentar: Delvist oversat fra Don't buy China's story: Clues that coronavirus may have leaked from a lab
Read that again. It sure sounds like China has a problem keeping dangerous pathogens in test tubes where they belong, doesn't it? And just how many "microbiology labs" are there in China that handle "advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus"?
It turns out that in all of China, there is only one. And this one is located in the Chinese city of Wuhan that just happens to be ... the epicenter of the epidemic.
That's right. China's only Level 4 microbiology lab that is equipped to handle deadly coronaviruses, called the National Biosafety Laboratory, is part of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
© AFP via Getty ImagesA member of a medical staff checks the temperature of a patient who has displayed mild symptoms of the coronavirus.
According to the PLA Daily, Chen has been researching coronaviruses since the SARS outbreak of 2003, as well as Ebola and anthrax. This would not be her first trip to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, either, since it is one of only two bioweapons research labs in all of China.
Does that suggest to you that the novel coronavirus, now known as SARS-CoV-2, may have escaped from that very lab, and that Chen's job is to try to put the genie back in the bottle, as it were? It does to me.
Add to this China's history of similar incidents. Even the deadly SARS virus has escaped — twice — from the Beijing lab where it was (and probably is) being used in experiments. Both "man-made" epidemics were quickly contained, but neither would have happened at all if proper safety precautions had been taken.
And then there is this little-known fact: Some Chinese researchers are in the habit of selling their laboratory animals to street vendors after they have finished experimenting on them.
You heard me right.
Instead of properly disposing of infected animals by cremation, as the law requires, they sell them on the side to make a little extra cash. Or, in some cases, a lot of extra cash. One Beijing researcher, now in jail, made a million dollars selling his monkeys and rats on the live animal market, where they eventually wound up in someone's stomach.
Also fueling suspicions about SARS-CoV-2's origins is the series of increasingly lame excuses offered by the Chinese authorities as people began to sicken and die.
They first blamed a seafood market not far from the Institute of Virology, even though the first documented cases of Covid-19 (the illness caused by SARS-CoV-2) involved people who had never set foot there. Then they pointed to snakes, bats and even a cute little scaly anteater called a pangolin as the source of the virus.
I don't buy any of this. It turns out that snakes don't carry coronaviruses and that bats aren't sold at a seafood market. Neither, for that matter, are pangolins, an endangered species valued for their scales as much as for their meat.
The evidence points to SARS-CoV-2 research being carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The virus may have been carried out of the lab by an infected worker or crossed over into humans when they unknowingly dined on a lab animal. Whatever the vector, Beijing authorities are now clearly scrambling to correct the serious problems with the way their labs handle deadly pathogens.
China has unleashed a plague on its own people. It's too early to say how many in China and other countries will ultimately die for the failures of their country's state-run microbiology labs, but the human cost will be high.
But not to worry. Xi has assured us that he is controlling biosecurity risks "to protect the people's health." PLA bioweapons experts are in charge.
I doubt the Chinese people will find that very reassuring. Neither should we.
Steven W. Mosher is the president of the Population Research Institute and the author of "Bully of Asia: Why China's 'Dream' Is the New Threat to World Order."
Kommentar: The media, it seems, is finally cottoning on to China's mistake. As we published last month: Did Coronavirus outbreak originate in a lab? Novel sequence in 2019-nCoV Virus genome suggests man-made cause
'The markets' are freaking out about the Coronavirus outbreak, but this is largely due to the manner in which it has been handled by the Chinese government, the WHO and other governments following their lead. At this point it seems pretty clear to us that the Coronavirus outbreak began in Wuhan, central China - location of that country's ONLY Level 4 biolab - because of an accidental release during vaccine trials, at which point it may have mutated further, leaving the Chinese authorities worried that it's only another mutation or two away from becoming truly pandemic.
As things stand, this outbreak is NOT pandemic, and the chances of it doing so are low. A death toll of 2,600 globally after 2 months is NOT a 'return of the Black Death'. This doesn't mean such is not in the cards in the not-too-distant future, but CoVid-19 is probably not it. The Chinese authorities, by their actions, gave away their culpability in causing this, and have likely given us a glimpse into how authorities the world over will attempt to contain future outbreaks.