He said multiple people from the conference have contacted him and said they, too, were experiencing extreme flu-like symptoms. At the time, there were no tests for COVID-19 but Melham said whatever he had hit him hard and made him feel "like a heroin addict going through withdrawal."
Miura told the Global Times that according to their earlier study of the coronavirus, they believe that the likely most recent common ancestor of the virus was spreading worldwide months before and after the first reported cases of COVID-19 in China.
Liang Wannian, who led the Chinese team during the World Health Organization's joint origins investigation in China, also suggested that the UN agency conduct the next stage of its study in countries where transmission of the virus had been identified as happening before it was recognized in Wuhan.
Will Uncle Sam be able to continue deceiving the world in terms of investigation into COVID-19 origins?
Politicization clouds scientific probeYet the road to the origins tracing was always hobbled by political pressure from certain countries, with the US being the most active. Washington has been sparing no efforts in chiding China for the coronavirus origins, despite the fact that Beijing hosted WHO for coronavirus origins probe.
Its latest attempt was made by Representative Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, who released a controversial report on August 2 that accused China of deliberately covering up what was happening inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) throughout 2019.
The report was slammed by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson a day later as "based on the concocted lies and distorted facts without providing any evidence, is not credible or scientific."
"We urge the US to respect facts and science and focus on fighting COVID-19 and saving lives, instead of engaging in political manipulation under the pretext of the epidemic and shifting the blame to others," said the spokesperson.
The US politicization of the virus origins probe sharply contrasts with scientists' rigorous attitude. Jonathan Stoye, head of the division of virology at Britain's Francis Crick Institute, told the Global Times that "At this stage, the key issue is to establish how it started if only to try to avoid any further pandemics of zoonotic origin. This is not a trivial task as illustrated by the difficulty in understanding the origins of other pandemics such as AIDS and the first SARS outbreak."
He noted that at this stage, accusations are particularly unhelpful, and "merely compound the difficulties in carrying out a successful investigation."
"This process [virus origins probe] must be collaborative and fully transparent. Perhaps this is a little naive, but I truly believe we must set aside any political or cultural differences in order to understand this question for the benefit of the entire population of the world," said Stoye.
Research personnel work inside the bio-level 4 lab at the USAMRIID at Fort Detrick on September 26, 2002. Photo: AFP
