{"id":32423,"date":"2021-05-24T23:15:21","date_gmt":"2021-05-24T14:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/may\/24\/china-rejects-report-of-sick-staff-at-wuhan-lab-prior-to-covid-outbreak"},"modified":"2021-05-24T23:15:21","modified_gmt":"2021-05-24T14:15:21","slug":"china-rejects-report-of-sick-staff-at-wuhan-lab-prior-to-covid-outbreak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=32423","title":{"rendered":"China rejects report of sick staff at Wuhan lab prior to Covid outbreak"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Spokesperson dismisses Wall Street Journal claims based on \u2018previously undisclosed\u2019 intelligence<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/series\/coronavirus-live\/latest\">Coronavirus \u2013 latest updates<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/coronavirus-outbreak\">See all our coronavirus coverage<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>China has vehemently denied <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/intelligence-on-sick-staff-at-wuhan-lab-fuels-debate-on-covid-19-origin-11621796228\">a Wall Street Journal report<\/a> citing US intelligence materials that said several members of staff at a key virus laboratory in Wuhan had fallen ill shortly before the first patient with Covid-like symptoms was recorded in the city on 8 December 2019.<\/p>\n<p>Foreign ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, said it was \u201ccompletely untrue\u201d that three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) became sick in autumn 2019. The report, based on \u201cpreviously undisclosed\u201d US intelligence, said the said the lab workers staff had become sick \u201cwith symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness\u201d.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/may\/24\/china-rejects-report-of-sick-staff-at-wuhan-lab-prior-to-covid-outbreak\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spokesperson dismisses Wall Street Journal claims based on \u2018previously undisclosed\u2019 intelligenceCoronavirus \u2013 latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageChina has vehemently denied a Wall Street Journal report citing US intelligence materials that s&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2205,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,1066,914,672,47,670,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-coronavirus","category-infectious-diseases","category-newspapers-magazines","category-us-news","category-wall-street-journal","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2205"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32423"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32456,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32423\/revisions\/32456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}