Bat infected with Covid-19 from research center may have been sold at wet market

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A Chinese research paper showing that the novel coronavirus had come from a Wuhan biolab and not from the bats sold at the Wuhan market had been censored by communist authorities and pulled out of online publication, according to American China expert and author Steven Mosher.

Written by Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao from the state-run South China University of Technology, the paper titled “The Possible Origins of the 2019-n-CoV coronavirus” confirmed that the China virus came from an animal known as the intermediate horseshoe bats, as alleged by communist authorities who said that bats were being sold in the Wuhan market.

But the researchers said the virus couldn’t have come from the Wuhan market, wrote Mosher in an April 2 article on LifeSite News.

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“We screened the area around the seafood market and identified two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus,” the researchers said. “Within 280 meters from the market, there was the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention (WHCDC). WHCDC hosted animals in laboratories for research purposes, one of which was specialized in pathogens collection and identification.”

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Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao, writes Mosher, noted that one WHCDC study used 155 horseshoe bats captured from Hubei province and 450 bats captured from Zhejiang province.

“They concluded,” Mosher writes, “that the first case of a human having contracted the virus was probably a biolab worker from the WHCDC or WIV who accidentally exposed himself to blood or urine from a bat and infected himself. They also suggested that infected tissue samples from research animals, or the animals themselves, may have wound up in the wet market.”

According to Mosher, the researchers also concluded that “safety” should be improved in “high risk, biohazardous laboratories,” and that authorities should “relocate [them] far away from the city center and other densely populated areas.”

Published February, the “Possible Origins” paper was quickly censored by Chinese authorities and disappeared online.

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