Recently, through US and British intelligence officials, the claim that the origin of COVID-19 is the Wuhan Virus Research Center in Wuhan, China has been raised again, and the institute's infectious disease research director has repeatedly denied the leak of the laboratory.
According to the New York Times, Dr. Shi Jeong-li of the Wuhan Institute, who is considered an authority on the bat coronavirus, said in an interview that he denied the allegations related to COVID-19 and the Wuhan Institute.
Dr. Shi said he had collected more than 10,000 bat virus samples from all over China, but said it was only to study the heterogeneous transmission of the bat coronavirus and had nothing to do with enhancing infectivity through genetic manipulation.
“Until the outbreak of COVID-19, we had never obtained a sample that caused the COVID-19 virus from the Wuhan laboratory.”
Just before the outbreak of COVID-19, the US government reported that some of the researchers at the Wuhan Institute were sick enough to require hospital treatment, saying, "It has never happened. Name which researcher was sick."
Dr. Shi objected to the claim that China and himself were behind the COVID-19 outbreak, saying, "How can you prove that there is no evidence? You are trying to stigmatize an innocent scientist."