Exclusive: Classified study found COVID-19 could have originated in Chinese lab

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WASHINGTON (SBG) - A classified study of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 conducted a year ago by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Department of Energy’s premier biodefense research institution, concluded the novel coronavirus at the heart of the current pandemic may have originated in a laboratory in China, Sinclair has learned.

Researchers at Livermore’s “Z Division,” the lab’s intelligence unit, issued the report May 27, 2020, classified “Top Secret.” Its existence is previously undisclosed. The Z Division report assessed that both the lab-origin theory and the zoonotic theory were plausible and warranted further investigation. Sinclair has not reviewed the report but confirmed its contents through interviews with multiple sources who read it or were briefed on its contents.

In an email to Sinclair, a Livermore spokesperson confirmed the existence of the report but declined to provide additional information. “Because the report you are referring to is classified,” wrote Lynda Seaver, director of public affairs, “it would be inappropriate for our lab to discuss this.”

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In its own report on the origin of SARS-CoV-2, issued March 30, the World Health Organization team – which was denied access by the Chinese government to key sites and data and was compelled to seek formal Chinese concurrence in its findings – designated the indirect-zoonotic theory (bat-animal-human) as “very likely,” even as the team conceded it could not identify an intermediate host. By contrast, the joint WHO-Chinese report termed the lab-origin theory “extremely unlikely.”

The disclosure that top scientists at Lawrence Livermore reached an opposite conclusion in the spring of 2020, by which point some 104,000 Americans had died – about 18 percent of the present total – is fueling calls for a new probe. “This is why it’s crucial the WHO conduct an independent investigation – not one that is tainted by the Chinese Communist Party’s malign influence,” said McCaul.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in March that Washington harbored “real concerns about the methodology and the process that went into the [WHO] report, including the fact that the government in Beijing apparently helped to write it.”

wjla.com/news/nation-world/exclusive

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