Three previously unreleased State Department cables, obtained by the public-health group U.S. Right to Know through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, confirm that Chinese officials covered up the outbreak and spread of Covid-19 and that their virology laboratory in Wuhan had close ties to the Chinese military. The cables add to mounting evidence suggesting that the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory.
It is undisputed that the first human infections with SARS-CoV-2—the virus that causes Covid-19—were in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. It is also undisputed that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)—located in its namesake city—is a leading center for research on bats and coronaviruses and was actively engaged in gain-of-function research to genetically engineer bat coronaviruses to attack human cells. Some WIV research was, as a PNAS article puts it, “part of an active and highly collaborative US–China scientific research program funded by the US Government”—namely, Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The program was funneled through the EcoHealth Alliance of New York, which has a long history of collaboration with WIV.
