China delayed Covid-19 gene sequence’s publication, US congressional panel says

A December 21, 2023, letter from an official on the US Division of Well being and Human Providers, responding to inquiries by McMorris Rodgers, confirmed {that a} Chinese language researcher, Dr. Lili Ren, submitted to GenBank a gene sequence that was “almost an identical” to the Sars-CoV-2 sequence submitted by one other Chinese language researcher and revealed by GenBank on January 12, 2020.

“Following established high quality management processes throughout which NCBI employees overview[ed] technical, however not scientific or public well being, particulars, a resubmission request was issued to Lili Ren on December 31, 2019,” stated the letter by HHS’s assistant secretary for laws, Melanie Anne Egorin.

“NIH by no means obtained the extra info requested,” Egorin stated. “Within the interim, one other submission to GenBank from a special submitter was obtained and revealed on January 12, 2020. That submission … supplied the genetic sequence for Sars-CoV-2. The sequence revealed on January 12, 2020, was almost an identical to the sequence that was submitted by Lili Ren.”

Professor Yong-Zhen Zhang, with the Shanghai Public Well being Scientific Centre and Faculty of Public Well being, Fudan College, launched the preliminary genome sequence of the Wuhan coronavirus.

Chinese language Covid-19 genetic information in US archive was eliminated in June 2020

The HHS letter didn’t determine Ren’s skilled affiliation, however the Home committee’s report identifies her as “an completed virologist on the Institute of Pathogen Biology of Chinese language Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing”.

“She can also be a present subgrantee of non-profit EcoHealth Alliance on the identical Nationwide Institute of Allergy and Infectious Illness (NIAID) grant because the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which has been debarred from receiving NIH grants for 10 years for failing to offer laboratory data requested by NIH,” the report stated.

Requested in regards to the committee’s report, the spokesman for China’s embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu, didn’t tackle McMorris Rodgers’ accusation straight, saying that Beijing’s response to Covid-19 was science-based.

“Guided by a people-first and life-first philosophy, China has stored refining our Covid response primarily based on science to make it extra focused,” Liu stated. “China’s Covid response insurance policies are science-based, efficient and according to China’s nationwide realities. They will stand the take a look at of historical past.”