Chinese virologist accuses Beijing of coronavirus cover-up

A Chinese virologist, who had escaped Hong Kong, has claimed Beijing was aware of the deadly novel coronavirus well before it stated it did.

Dr Li-Meng Yan has specialized in virology and immunology at Hong Kong School of Public Health. She says she was one of the first scientists in the world to study the novel coronavirus.

In an interview to US-based Fox News, she, now has gone underground, says she is afraid of the Chinese authorities that she could never go back to her home and lives with the hard truth that she’ll likely never see her friends or family there again. “But the risk is worth it,” she adds.

“The reason I came to the US is because I deliver the message of the truth of COVID,” she told Fox News from an unrevealed location.

She said that if she tried to tell her story in China, she “will be disappeared and killed.”

Yan was reportedly asked by her supervisor at the University/WHO reference lab, Dr Leo Poon, in 2019 to look into the odd cluster of SARS-like cases coming out of mainland China at the end of December 2019.

When she informed her master of her knowledge of the cases and about human-to-human transmission well before China or the WHO admitted such spread was possible, she was told to keep quiet and continue working.

A few days later, on January 9, 2020, the WHO put out a statement: “According to Chinese authorities, the virus in question can cause severe illness in some patients and does not transmit readily between people… There is limited information to determine the overall risk of this reported cluster.”

She also argues the co-director of a WHO-affiliated lab, Professor Malik Peiris, was aware of it but didn’t do anything about it.

Earlier,the Associated Press had reported that , WHO was frustrated on China’s hesitation to provide sufficient information about coronavirus. Over the significant delays by China to provide information they needed, considerable frustration was prevailing among WHO officials.

It was the U.S president Donald Trump, who first alleges that had China informed in detail about the pandemic, there could have minimized the causality due to the Covid-19, made accusation against WHO for defending China in this regard. On account of the same reason, the Trump had officially begun to withdraw U.S from WHO.

U.S Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had also reiterated the same that the coronavirus pandemic was originated in a Chinese laboratory, but was accepted there was no certainty.“We don’t have certainty, and there is significant evidence that this came from the laboratory. Those statements can both be true,” Pompeo told reporters.

A spy file compiled by Five Eyes intelligence agencies of the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand earlier had alleged that China lied to the world about coronavirus by covering up the outbreak – which is killing tens of thousands around the world and it also said quoting experts that based on this 15 page document obtained by The Saturday Telegraph, a case could be taken against China for its mishandling of deadly coronavirus.