Now, there are reports that Chinese scientists destroyed evidence about the virus back in December, according to the Times:
Chinese laboratories identified a mystery virus as a highly infectious new pathogen by late December last year, but they were ordered to stop tests, destroy samples and suppress the news, a Chinese media outlet has revealed.
A regional health official in Wuhan, center of the outbreak, demanded the destruction of the lab samples that established the cause of unexplained viral pneumonia on January 1.
China did not acknowledge there was human-to-human transmission until more than three weeks later.
The detailed revelations by Caixin Global, a respected independent publication, provide the clearest evidence yet of the scale of the cover-up in the crucial early weeks when the opportunity was lost to control the outbreak.
Censors have been rapidly deleting the report from the Chinese internet.
One doctor in Wuhan tried to warn the world about this virus in December and the Communist state authorities came down on her hard.
A Wuhan doctor said she wishes she could rewind the clock to December when she first sounded the alarm about a new pneumonia-like virus — only to back away after being reprimanded by Chinese officials.
Ai Fen, director of Wuhan Central Hospital's emergency department, told people that a colleague sent her a diagnostic report in late December of a worrying infection that mirrored severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), according to the South China Morning Post.
Ai shared a picture of the report on a WeChat group on December 30, and then its members circulated that photo more widely.
Whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang, 34, who was silenced by Chinese officials and then died of the COVID-19 virus, was part of that group.
Ai said she also gave hospital authorities a heads-up about the virus.
"I even grabbed our hospital respiratory department director, who happened to be passing my office, and told him that one of his patients was confirmed to have been infected with a SARS-like virus," Ai said, the Post reported.
Bookmarks