China Destroys Evidence of Virus Before W.H.O. Investigation

The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) has announced that its investigation into the origin of COVID-19 in its home city of Wuhan has yielded no significant evidence. This is an unsurprising conclusion as Chinese officials have admitted that they destroyed samples of the virus and other critical evidence early on in the pandemic.

The W.H.O. team, who was working closely with Communist Party experts, spent the majority of last week visiting various sites in Wuhan. One of those sites was the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), the lab that many speculate leaked the virus. The W.H.O. team also investigated the Huanan seafood market, the wet market where Communist Party officials initially claimed the virus came from.

What did they find?

The results of the investigation echoed the Chinese government’s claims that COVID-19 may have originated in a different country and entered China on frozen food products. Most international scientists consider this theory highly unlikely.

The W.H.O. team also claimed they found no evidence that suggests there were cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan prior to December 2019. But in March 2020, the South China Morning Post published a report, citing leaked Chinese government data that shows the first diagnosed case of COVID-19 was recorded in Wuhan on November 17, 2019.

No evidence exists of any Chinese coronavirus cases in humans anywhere in the world before November 17, 2019. Some research suggests early cases of coronavirus identified in Italy and Brazil in the same month, but not prior to that date.

Liang Wannian, a researcher on the W.H.O.-Communist Party research team, claimed that the first case of coronavirus in Wuhan was diagnosed on December 8. Liang also denied that the Huanan seafood market was the source of the virus. “There is no evidence showing how the virus was introduced into Huanan seafood market,” she said.

Peter Ben Embarek, the head of the W.H.O. team, told reporters that the virus most likely did not originate from the Wuhan lab because researchers found no evidence of the virus there during their visit.

“After days of field studies in Wuhan, the joint team is looking at four hypotheses, including direct transmission from animal-to-human, virus jumping to human through an intermediate host, frozen food route-related transmission and lab-related transmission,” Ben Embarek said.

“Currently, there is no evidence to suggest that handling food or consuming food is associated with COVID-19 [Chinese coronavirus],” the official page of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reads. It specifies frozen food handling in its description of food transmission probability.

The investigative team failed to address the lack of evidence that frozen food can infect individuals. According to the CDC, there is no evidence in the United States that food can infect a person with COVID-19.

Ben Embarek also said that there was “no indication” that the virus originated in the Wuhan lab, but did not address the impact that Chinese officials destroying evidence linked to the outbreak could have had on the investigation.

The team did not address Chinese government officials destroying early samples of the virus and “disinfecting” the market, a process that would erase any traces of the virus there.

The Chinese Communist Party has repeatedly demanded that the W.H.O. investigate the United States as the origin for COVID-19, despite no evidence that the virus originated here.