A former Trump administration official says it’s “entirely possible” that the Chinese government killed a Wuhan scientist several years ago who may have started the COVID-19 pandemic while secretly working on a vaccine. Months before the global health crisis began.
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In 2019, Chinese military scientist Zhou Yusen actively conducted research on live animals at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, said Dr. Robert Kadlec, who served as deputy secretary for the biodefense and epidemic response divisions during the pandemic.
AFP
The Wuhan Institute is viewed by some American officials as a possible origin of the pandemic. Nevertheless, American intelligence assured in a report in June that it had no evidence that COVID-19 was created in a laboratory in China, without deciding on the origin of the pandemic.
AFP
Dr. Yusen filed a patent for a COVID-19 vaccine in February 2020.
Less than a month later, China imposed a lockdown in Wuhan as the spread of the respiratory virus spiraled out of control.
AFP
Three months later, Dr. died. Yusen after falling from the roof of the Wuhan Institute.
“It appears he was censored because of what happened,” Mr Kadlec told Australian broadcaster Sky News.
“Our evidence suggests that something happened while he was working, which we believe is when the virus first appeared. Regardless of whether he was held accountable in a formal process or not, he was certainly dead by July [2020]”, he added.
AFP
Asked whether he thought it was possible that Yusen was killed because he started the pandemic, Mr Kadlec said: “That is certainly possible, we thought that was a plausible possibility, but we had no evidence to support that assessment. “
The speed at which Dr. Yusen developed a COVID-19 vaccine raised concerns that the Wuhan Institute was secretly working on a vaccine several months before Beijing admitted the emergence of this new virus, the New York Post reports.
AFP
American vaccine developers have told government investigators that it would have taken at least three months to develop into Dr. Yusen’s patent suggests that he had been working on this vaccine for at least two months before Chinese authorities did not announce the appearance of the new virus.
House Republicans concluded in a report released in April that this research may have led to an accidental lab leak.