Recent documents obtained from the US Department of Health and Human Services indicate that a Chinese researcher and virologist Dr Lili Ren had isolated and mapped the structure of COVID-19 at least two weeks before Beijing officially acknowledged the virus.
The documents reveal that Dr Ren uploaded almost the entire sequence of COVID-19 to a US government-run database on December 28, 2019, while Beijing presented similar information to the World Health Organization on January 11, 2020, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.
These two weeks could have played a crucial role in shaping the global response to the pandemic and expediting COVID-19 vaccine development.
Dr Ren attempted to publish the information on the virus on GenBank, a platform operated by the US National Institutes of Health. However, her work was never published on the site; instead, it was deleted after she failed to address technical issues unrelated to the scientific merit of her submission.
Documents exposing the early COVID-19 sequencing details were released after the House Energy and Commerce Committee threatened to subpoena the Department of Health and Human Services.
The revelation pointed to Dr Lili Ren's case as the earliest known instance of a Chinese researcher's COVID sequencing work being deleted after submission to GenBank, raising concerns about potential interference from Beijing.
Committee Chairs Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), and Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) stressed the need for further investigation into the knowledge of Chinese and US health officials in the pandemic's early days.
They said, "This significant discovery further underscores why we cannot trust any of the so-called ‘facts' or data provided by the CCP and calls into serious question the legitimacy of any scientific theories based on such information. The American people deserve to know the truth about the origins of SARS-CoV-2, and our investigation has uncovered numerous causes for concern, including how taxpayers' dollars are spent, how our government's public health agencies operate, and the need for more oversight into research grants to foreign scientists. In addition to equipping us to better prepare for the next pandemic, this investigation's findings will help us as policymakers as we work to strengthen America's biosafety practices and bolster oversight of research grants.”
The Chinese Embassy refrained from commenting on the incident but stood by China's response to the pandemic and the information it shared globally.
A spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal, “China has kept refining our COVID response based on science to make it more targeted. China's COVID response policies are science-based, effective, and consistent with China's national realities. They can stand the test of history.”
