Many people, including medical experts, have been questioning the origin of the coronavirus. Many Chinese individually questioned whether it was created by the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, China’s first Biocontainment Level 4 (BL4) lab (Chinese call it a P4 lab) in Wuhan.
There have been widespread discussions among Chinese individuals on the Internet about a few “theories” to support this suspicion, though officially the media have remained silent:
- The virus was leaked to the public by selling experimental animals with the coronavirus.
- Huang Yanling (黄燕玲), a female graduate student who studied at the P4 lab in 2012, was the first coronavirus patient (Patient “No. Zero”).
- No one from the P4 lab has caught the coronavirus, so they may know a specific way to protect themselves.
On February 15, the government declared theory #2 to be a “rumor.” The Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, issued a statement that Huang Yanling didn’t work at Wuhan P4 lab after her graduation.
Beijing News interviewed Shi Zhengli, the lead technician at the P4 lab and Chen Quanjiao, a researcher at the lab. Both were not sure if the lab has someone called Huang Yanling, but Shi Zhengli flatly rejected the idea that patient “No. Zero” was from the lab. “How could that be? It is definitely fake news. I can guarantee that including graduate students, no one in our institute has been infected. Our institute has zero infections.”
Caixin also gave a detailed report on patient “No. Zero.” In addition to mentioning that it was a rumor, it explained the significance of identifying patient “No. Zero” and mentioned that the first reported infection case of coronavirus was on December 1, 2019 and the patient didn’t go to the seafood market, which China blamed as the starting point of the virus.
Related posting on Chinascope:
1. Excerpt in Chinese:
2月15日晚间，新京报记者就此事向中国科学院武汉病毒研究所研究员石正丽、流感病毒实验室研究员陈全姣求证。两人均表示，对病毒所是否有一位名叫黄燕玲的女研究生并不掌握，但可以保证武汉病毒所目前无一人感染新冠肺炎。
“怎么可能？这个一看就是假新闻。”石正丽说，“我可以保证，包括研究生在内，我们所没有一个人被病毒感染过，我们所是零感染。”
Source: Beijing News, February 16, 2020
http://www.bjnews.com.cn/news/2020/02/16/690141.html
2. Excerpt in Chinese:
“零号病人”指的是第一个患某种传染病，并开始散播病毒的患者。在流行病学调查中，通常被叫做首发病例。新冠肺炎疫情暴发以来，其零号病人一直未被认定。此前武汉市卫健委通报的首例新冠肺炎确诊病例于2019年12月8日发病。但1月24日《柳叶刀》在线发表的一篇论文则显示，武汉金银潭医院收治的第一个病例于2019年12月1日发病，且没有华南海鲜市场暴露史（参见财新周刊封面报道“新冠病毒何以至此”之三：溯源新冠病毒）。
Source: Caixin, February 16, 2020
http://china.caixin.com/2020-02-16/101516131.html