What they’re saying: Yuan Zhiming, the director of the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory and vice director of the WIV, denied the novel coronavirus had any connection to the lab in an April 18 interview with Chinese state broadcaster CGTN.
“There is no way this virus came from us,” said Yuan. “People can’t help but make associations, which I think is understandable. But it’s bad when some are deliberately trying to mislead people.”
Shi Zhengli, a highly respected scientist who also works at the institute and who has long studied coronaviruses that come from bats, said in February that she could “guarantee on my life” that the novel coronavirus did not come from the lab, according to the Wall Street Journal.
A version of the second theory, which claims that “patient zero” was an intern at the facility, has also made the rounds on the Chinese internet, prompting state news agency Xinhua to publish a Feb. 16 article stating that the person in question had never been infected.
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