Chinese researchers isolated and mapped Covid-19 at the end of December 2019, at least two weeks before Beijing revealed details of the deadly virus to the world. This revelation was made exclusively by the Wall Street Journal after reviewing documents obtained by the US Department of Health from a House committee.
According to the WSJ, a Chinese researcher in Beijing uploaded an almost complete sequence of the structure of Covid into a database managed by the American government on December 28, 2019, while China shared the sequence of the virus with the World Health Organization (WHO) only on January 11, 2020.
At the time when the researcher, Lili Ren of the Institute of Pathogen Biology in Beijing, had already mapped the virus, Chinese officials were still publicly describing the outbreak in Wuhan as a viral pneumonia “of unknown cause” and had yet to close the wholesale market live animal premises, the site of one of the first Covid-19 outbreaks.
The new information does not shed light on the debate whether the coronavirus emerged from an infected animal or from a laboratory leak, but it suggests that the world does not yet have a complete explanation of the origin of the pandemic.
The extra two weeks could have proved crucial in helping the international medical community identify how Covid-19 spreads, develop medical defenses, and initiate a possible vaccine, according to specialists. In late 2019, scientists and governments around the world were racing to understand the mysterious disease they would eventually call Covid-19 that would kill millions of people. This new insight raises questions about the handling of critical information by Chinese authorities at the outset of the pandemic.
The information comes at a time when the debate around the origins of the virus continues and the world grapples with the ongoing global impacts of the pandemic. The revelations have led to calls for further investigation and transparency in order to better understand the origins and initial response to the virus.