France contradicts US on coronavirus link to Wuhan research lab

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France contradicts US on coronavirus link to Wuhan research lab

By Michel Rose

Paris: France said on Friday there was no evidence so far of a link between the new coronavirus and the work of the P4 research laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the current pandemic started.

Workers wearing protective suits, masks and gloves handle containers of hot dry noodles at a noodle factory in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China.

Workers wearing protective suits, masks and gloves handle containers of hot dry noodles at a noodle factory in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China.Credit: Bloomberg

"We would like to make it clear that there is to this day no factual evidence corroborating the information recently circulating in the United States press that establishes a link between the origins of COVID-19 and the work of the P4 laboratory of Wuhan, China," an official at President Emmanuel Macron's office said.

The broad scientific consensus holds that SARS-CoV-2, the official name of the coronavirus, originated in bats.

In 2004, France signed an agreement with China to establish a research lab on infectious diseases of biosafety level 4, the highest level, in Wuhan, according to a French decree signed by then-foreign minister Michel Barnier.

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US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday his government was trying to determine whether the coronavirus emanated from a lab in Wuhan, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Beijing "needs to come clean" on what they know. 

General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday that US intelligence indicates that the coronavirus likely occurred naturally, as opposed to being created in a laboratory in China, but there is no certainty either way.

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a key member of President Trump’s pandemic task force, on Friday also rejected suggestions the novel coronavirus was man-made.

During the White House daily briefing, Fauci said, “The mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.”

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Fauci cited evolutionary virologists who studied “the sequences there and the sequences in bats as they evolve.”

Dr Anthony Fauci has rejected notion that the virus was human-made.

Dr Anthony Fauci has rejected notion that the virus was human-made.Credit: Bloomberg

Speculation and conspiracy theories center on a virology institute in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the outbreak began this winter. One theory suggested the crisis was the result of biological weapons research.

The Washington Post said this week that national security officials in the Trump administration have long suspected research facilities in Wuhan to be the source of the novel coronavirus outbreak.

As far back as February, the Chinese state-backed Wuhan Institute of Virology dismissed rumours that the virus may have been artificially synthesised at one of its laboratories or perhaps escaped from such a facility.

Reuters, Washington Post

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