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EXCLUSIVE: The U.S. is performing a full-blown investigation into whether the novel coronavirus, which went on to morph into a worldwide pandemic that has brought the global economy to its knees, got away from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, Fox News has discovered.
Intelligence operatives are stated to be gathering details about the lab and the preliminary outbreak of the infection. Intelligence analysts are piecing together a timeline of what the government knew and “producing a precise picture of what took place,” the sources said.
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Once that examination is total– something that is anticipated to happen in the near-term– the findings will be presented to the Trump administration. At that point White Home policymakers and President Trump will utilize the findings to figure out how to hold the country responsible for the pandemic.
Fox News first reported on Wednesday that there is increasing self-confidence that the break out likely originated in a Wuhan laboratory, not as a bioweapon but as part of a Chinese effort to show that its efforts to determine and fight viruses are equivalent or higher than those of the U.S.
U.S. officials and the intelligence community have validated to Fox News that they have actually taken the possibility of the coronavirus being manufactured or engineered inside China as some sort of bioweapon off the table and have actually ruled it out at this moment.
Sources point to the structure of the infection, in stating the genome mapping specifically shows it was not genetically altered. The sources believe the preliminary transmission of the infection was a naturally taking place pressure that was being studied there– and after that went into the population in Wuhan.
Sources say the examination of open source and categorized information points to the work in the lab of Dr. Shi Zhengli, who was dealing with antivirals and immunizations for coronavirus, specifically with bats.
SOURCES BELIEVE CORONAVIRUS BREAK OUT CAME FROM WUHAN LAB AS PART OF CHINA’S EFFORTS TO TAKE ON US
United States authorities are 100 percent confident China went to terrific lengths to conceal after the infection was out, the sources said.
In addition, the sources think that the World Health Organization– which the president stopped briefly funding to today over its function in the crisis– was either complicit in the coverup, or looked the other method.
The president hinted at an examination on Wednesday when he told Fox News’ John Roberts: ” More and more we’re hearing the story … we are doing a really thorough evaluation of this terrible scenario.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday restated that the administration was considering the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and implicated the Chinese federal government of stonewalling researchers from learning what took place.
” We understand that the very first sightings of this took place within miles of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. We understand that this– the history of the center, the very first BSL-4 laboratory where there’s high-end virus research being conducted, happened at that site,” Pompeo stated on the Hugh Hewitt Show. ” We know that the Chinese Communist Celebration, when it began to evaluate what to do within Wuhan, thought about whether the WIV was, in reality, the place where this came from.”
” And most importantly, we understand they have actually not allowed the world’s researchers to go into that laboratory to evaluate what happened there, what’s occurring there, what’s happening there even as we speak,” he stated.
There has actually been speculation for months, not just in the U.S., that the virus came from a Chinese lab. A February study on the origins of the virus from the South China University of Innovation concluded: “In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus most likely stemmed from a laboratory in Wuhan.”
Must it turn out that the virus left from a Chinese lab, the international pushback versus the Chinese government might be considerable. The virus has actually infected and eliminated numerous thousands of people and damaged economies around the world. Trump, who has actually regularly taken a hardline towards China even prior to the crisis, would be anticipated to lead calls to make Beijing face repercussions.
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During Thursday’s everyday press instruction, China’s foreign ministry pressed back on claims that anything suspicious had actually taken place in the Wuhan laboratory and reiterated there was no evidence that the coronavirus, which has actually contaminated more than 2 million people worldwide, was made there.
” The head of the WHO has actually specified lot of times that there is no evidence that the brand-new coronavirus originated in the lab,” representative Zhao Lijian stated. “Lots of prominent medical professionals on the planet also think that the so-called lab leaks have no clinical basis.”
Fox News’ Barnini Chakraborty and Gregg Re contributed to this report.
