China has accepted that it destroyed the early samples of the novel coronavirus, as claimed by the US authorities.
According to the Baaghi TV report, China has confirmed that it had ordered unauthorized laboratories to destroy samples of the new coronavirus but insisted that it was due to “biosafety reasons.”
The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had repeatedly said that China refused to give virus samples taken from patients infected with COVID-19 in late December last year and that officials had destroyed early samples, according to South China Morning Post.
According to the Chinese National Health Commission’s Science and Education department, the samples were destroyed to prevent the risk of laboratory biological safety and prevent secondary disasters caused by unidentified pathogens.
According to the Chinese authorities, this was not done to hide samples from other countries but the step was taken strictly for biosafety measures and that the remarks made by the US officials were out of context.
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It is said that when the pneumonia-like disease was first reported in Wuhan, “national-level professional institutes” were working to identify the pathogen that was causing it.
“Based on comprehensive research and expert opinion, we decided to temporarily manage the pathogen causing pneumonia as Class II – highly pathogenic – and imposed biosafety requirements on sample collection, transport, and experimental activities, as well as destroying the samples,” a health expert from the National Health Commission said. This is the national standard procedure for handling any highly pathogenic samples in China.
Chinese public health laws specify that laboratories not meeting the requirements must either transfer them to a qualified depositary for safekeeping or destroy them.
Pompeo had previously attacked the Chinese Communist Party for covering up the extent of the virus and censoring the exact number.
“The Chinese Communist Party tried to suppress information about this virus, about where it began, about how it started, about how it was being transmitted from human to human, indeed employed the World Health Organization to further that storyline,” Pompeo told Christian radio program Focus on the Family, earlier this week, Newsweek reported.
The news comes at a time when the tension between the US and China is increasing. Trump added to White House speculation in April when he said that he had evidence showing that the coronavirus originated from a lab in Wuhan, China, but that he would not reveal what it is.
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