Gottlieb noted that documents obtained under the FOIA also show that the viruses were made more deadly to humans in several labs around Wuhan, including a level three biocontainment facility, which has lesser security that the level four labs previously mentioned in relation to the outbreak.
“Whether or not this was gain-of-function is a political and legal discussion,” Gottlieb said in an interview with CNBC.
He added, “The bottom line is they were doing research on viruses in that institute that was making those viruses potentially more dangerous to humans. And handling the viruses in ways that could potentiate their release, particularly by infecting transgenic animals that have fully-humanized immune systems.”
“They were doing things in that lab that could have led to circumstances where a virus that was purposefully evolved in ways that it could be more dangerous to humans could have escaped,” Gottlieb further emphasised.
He continued, “What’s revealed by these documents are two interesting details I previously didn’t know. First, there was experimentation being done on MERS-like coronaviruses, not just SARS-like coronaviruses. Second, they affirmed what we suspected about coronavirus research being done at other institutes around Wuhan… at a level three biocontainment facility.
Watch:
Gottlieb previously noted that “These kinds of lab leaks happen all the time,” further warning that “in China, the last six known outbreaks of SARS-1 have been out of labs, including the last known outbreak, which was a pretty extensive outbreak that China initially wouldn’t disclose that it came out of lab.”
“It was only disclosed finally by some journalists who were able to trace that outbreak back to a laboratory,” Gottlieb explained back in May.
No comments:
Post a Comment