A World Health Organization investigator has released a bombshell claim that patient zero may have been infected by a bat while working in the Wuhan lab. “Dr. Peter Ben Embarek – who led a much-derided fact-finding mission to China – made the claim despite initially dismissing the lab leak theory as extremely unlikely in the initial World Health Organisation (WHO) probe” reports The Sun.
Dr. Embarek told TV2 “an employee who was infected in the field by taking samples falls under one of the probable hypotheses.” He added, “This is where the virus jumps directly from a bat to a human. In that case, it would then be a laboratory worker instead of a random villager or other person who has regular contact with bats…So it is actually in the probable category.”
Embarek specializes in food safety and zoonoses and told TV2 that the lab theory was not discussed at all until 48 hours before the WHO team were due to leave China. “It was right up to the end that it was discussed whether it should be included or not,” he said.
Dr. Ben Embarek said: “We did not get to look at laboratory books or documents directly from the laboratory. “We got a presentation, and then we talked about and asked the questions we wanted to ask, but we did not get to look at any documentation at all.”
The Sun reports:
And he revealed the WHO team’s initial “extremely unlikely” conclusion was only included at all after tough negotiation with Chinese scientists, who originally wanted NOTHING in the report about the lab leak.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology is located just a stone’s throw from the first known cases at a seafood market in the Chinese city of Wuhan. It specialised in studying bat-based coronaviruses very similar to Covid – and was found to be holding the virus’s closest genetic cousin.
Ever since this fact was revealed questions have been asked over whether the lab – which is the highest security of its kind in all China – could have played a role in the origins of the virus.
China has aggressively denied any allegations – as has the lab – and some leading figures attempted to undermine the lab leak hypothesis last year as nothing more than a “conspiracy theory”.
However, as circumstantial evidence mounts the proposal is being taken more and more seriously be governments and scientists.
