American diplomats in 2018 were warned about security issues in the Wuhan Institute of Virology

Two years before pandemic COVID-19 employees of the U.S. Embassy in China several times visited the Chinese research center in Wuhan and sent to Washington two dispatches with warnings about inadequate safety measures in the laboratory that conducted studies of coronaviruses of bats. This is with reference to own sources 14 APR written edition of The Washington Post.

In 2015, the laboratory became the first in China that received the highest level of international security in the field of biological research – R4.

U.S. Consul General in Wuhan Jamison of Fuss and the Embassy’s counselor for environment, science, technology and health Rick Switzer after a visit in Wuhan, wrote in the telegram that, according to their observations, activities of the laboratory in the field of potential transmission of coronaviruses of bats to man is a risk of a new pandemic, similar to SARS.

In China there is a serious lack of adequately trained technical specialists and researchers noted fuss and Switzer in the dispatch, dated January 2018. Diplomats have offered to help Chinese scientists to increase the level of protection and research center. They noted that studies of coronaviruses as important and dangerous.

However, the U.S. government has not provided any additional assistance from the Chinese lab, and the dispatches remembered in 2020, when Wuhan became the epicenter of the epidemic, the newspaper said.

Evidence that the laboratory of Wuhan Institute of Virology has become a source of infection is not, however, exclude a leak from the place where for many years he studied coronaviruses of bats, is impossible, said the publishing researcher at Berkeley Xiao Qiang. He also drew attention to the laboratory, Wuhan center for control and prevention of diseases, which operates at a lower Biosafety level P2.

The Chinese government still refuses to answer basic questions scientists and the public about the origin of the novel coronavirus, according to The Washington Post.

Wuhan Institute of Virology in January – February has become the target of information attacks in social networks. Deputy Director of the Institute Shi Jinli made a statement in which he denied the human impact on the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. She said that he had spent several sleepless nights, checking could the virus escape from the lab, reported on February 7, the publication Caixin. Shi Jinli vowed to “my life” that leak had not happened.

Flash coronavirus infection COVID-19 was recognized by the government of China in December 2019. To curb the spread of infection, in January, China introduced strict quarantine measures, 13 cities in Hubei province was effectively blocked.

March 11, the world health organization declared the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.