Chinese virologist says Anthony Fauci's emails prove her Wuhan lab leak claims

A Chinese virologist, who was among the first to suggest that the COVID virus leaked from a Wuhan lab, has said that US expert Anthony Fauci’s email proves she was right all along. Earlier this week, several media outlets in the US released thousands of emails sent by Fauci when the coronavirus infection was just on the rise. In one such email, an executive at EcoHealth which funded research at China's Wuhan Institute of Virology into the COVID-19 origin thanked Dr Fauci for publicly stating that scientific evidence supports a 'natural origin’ for the Coronavirus and not a lab leak.

The email triggered a controversy across the US with many suspecting a link between Fauci and the Wuhan lab. However, the White House medical adviser labelled it as “nonsense” and stressed that he has been “open-minded” about the origin of COVID. Now speaking to Newsmax, Dr Li-Meng Yan said that the emails have provided “a lot of useful information” and that they verify her work from the very beginning”.  

CCP's benefit

Yan was one of the initial researchers who probed into the origins of coronavirus and claimed that it was synthesized by the Chinese military. However, she was forced into hiding after she accused the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of a cover-up, New York Post reported. In her latest interview, she accused Fauci and “other people” of knowing “what happened” but hiding it for their own benefit as well as that of the CCP.

"He knows all these things," she insisted of Fauci and the apparent gain-of-function work carried out by the now-notorious Wuhan Institute of Virology in the heart of the city where the pandemic first emerged. Citing one of the emails, Yan said that it showed that Fauci had, back on February 1,  realized that there would be a gain-of-function experiment involved in the COVID-19 virus. Since its origin in December 2019, the contagious coronavirus has infected over 173,389,419 people, out of whom 3,729,346  have lost their lives. Meanwhile, more than 156,169,566 have recovered. US, India and Brazil have remained to be the worst affected nations with an overwhelming death rate and several outbursts. 

Image: AP/ Republicworld