The US Department of State has released an internal cable dating back to 2018 that describes concerns raised by several officials from the US Embassy in China about the lack of "adequately trained personnel" in a then-established Wuhan virology lab. Two years after the memo appeared, Wuhan became the epicentre of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
Earlier leaked parts of the cable were what US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo referred to as "enormous" evidence when he fueled claims that COVID-19 originated in the Wuhan lab. His confidence was also echoed by Trump, who actively put the blame on China for the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic.
However, the memo does not directly point to the possibility of the coronavirus originating in the lab. A three-page document describes the virology lab, its goals, aims, and survey results noting that the lab "has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate".
When describing how the lab operates and the procedure for obtaining permits to study a certain type of virus, the memo's authors outlined a lack of clarity on how the Chinese National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) determines whether a virus can or cannot be accessed and studied.
The document, however, sheds light on what kind of viruses the lab was allowed to work on. Among those were SARS-like viruses: the Ebola virus, Nipah virus, and Xinjiang hemorrhagic fever. Analysing the lab's productivity, the memo's authors described research into the origin of SARS which "strongly suggested" that the SARS-like COVID-19 coronavirus originated from a population of bats and could be transmitted to humans via these animals.
'You Have to Prove It'
The contents of the memo were not officially released until a lawsuit from The Washington Post was filed. After the full version of the memo became public, it appeared that, in its entirety, the document does not prove or disprove the Wuhan virology lab conspiracy theory about the origins of COVID-19, as was highlighted in the WaPo report.
The Washington Post noted COVID-19 genetic sequences do not match those of viruses studied in the lab.
China, which has been under pressure over the COVID-19 origin conspiracy theory and the alleged "lack of transparency", vehemently dismissed the accusations, repeatedly insisting that the novel coronavirus was not man-made.
"I don't see any evidence to support the idea that this was released deliberately or inadvertently", said Ian Lipkin, the director of the Centre for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University, cited by The Washington Post. "You can't just say someone is guilty of accidentally releasing a virus. You have to prove it".
Tom Inglesby, the director of the Centre for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University, told The Washington Post that people should not rely much on the contents of a document created two years ago.
"It was written in January 2018, two years before when this pandemic is judged to have started, and a great deal of change can happen within a lab like this in two years time... [] Overall, my judgment continues to be that [COVID-19] is consistent with a naturally occurring source. I'm very much hoping that Chinese public health officials will soon share the results of their scientific and epidemiologic investigations into the origin of [COVID-19]", he said.
Trump Administration Standoff With China on COVID-19
Not long after the pandemic struck the United States, putting America at the top of the world's most-affected counties, a wave of accusations regarding a "covering up" of the pandemic were aimed at the PRC, resulting in pressure on Beijing, alongside the World Health Organisation, who was labeled by Trump as "China-biased".
In May, Trump asserted he was confident that COVID-19 originated from a Wuhan virology lab, offering allegations of "incompetence" by lab staff.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology dismissed the accusations as "pure fabrication", echoing condemnation from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, who advised the US to "handle its domestic affairs properly first".
The World Health Organisation, since defunded by Trump, saw the US leave the agency over the allegations, but has consistently denied the existence of a cover up of the pandemic.
