The Wuhan laboratory in China, which was suspected of leaking COVID-19, has been nominated for China’s top science award.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences has nominated the Wuhan Institute of Virology for its Outstanding Science and Technology Achievement Prize in 2021.
China is beckoning for the Wuhan Institute of Virology to get a Nobel Prize. While the US is investigating whether it leaked the coronavirus. In a news conference last Thursday, Zhao Lijian, a top spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, chastised people for thinking that the virus originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Speaking at a press conference he reacted to accusations that the Wuhan lab itself was accountable for the pandemic, with allegations ranging from claiming it either deliberately engineered and spread the virus or that a leak in the bureau devised the outbreak. According to him, just because the lab first discovered it does not mean that the laboratory-produced it. He denied the idea that the virus was the creation of the lab and had escaped.
“The genome sequence of COVID-19 was first identified by Chinese scientists. But that does not mean Wuhan is the source of the coronavirus. Nor can it be inferred that the coronavirus was made by Chinese scientists,” Zhao said.
He later added that the team in Wuhan should get the Nobel Prize in medicine for their research on COVID-19, instead of the criticism.
China also nominated the lab for the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Outstanding Science and Technology Achievement Prize this year. It was for their work on COVID-19, according to China’s state-run Global Times newspaper on Sunday. Many experts originally disregarded the lab leak idea, but it has lately gained momentum.
Wuhan lab Leak theory
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that three employees at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were ill more than a month before specialists discovered the first few COVID-19 cases, according to a US intelligence study.
President Joe Biden authorized a fresh intelligence community investigation into the virus’s origins days after The Journal’s disclosure. He set a deadline of 90 days for the results.
