JUST IN: Wall Street Journal Report About Wuhan Lab Researchers Being Hospitalized in November 2019 Raises New Questions About Virus’ Origins

A new report by the Wall Street Journal is raising new questions about the origins of the deadly Covid-19 virus, with newly released intelligence showing that three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough to be hospitalized in November 2019, a month before the virus was first identified.

Researchers at the lab in Wuhan studied coronaviruses and other pathogens, leading to speculation that the lab could have been — even unintentionally — the origin of the virus that has killed millions of people worldwide and left many others with troubling long-term symptoms. China has adamantly denied these claims, but has been criticized for a lack of transparency on the issue.

According to the WSJ, the Wuhan lab employees were sick “with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness.”

Michael Gordon, one of the authors of the WSJ article, was on CNN Newsroom to discuss their reporting with Pamela Brown.

“No theory has been proven — fully proven,” said Gordon, noting that the theory it originated with a bat, then infected another species of animal, and then humans, has “never been proven because they have not found any animals that have been contaminated with the virus.”

The theory that it escaped from a lab was initially discounted as a conspiracy theory, and but we’ve found that there’s a renewed effort to take a look at the lab theory, primarily because of circumstantial evidence, but significant circumstantial evidence.

Brown asked him for clarification about the evidence and what they had learned about the timeline.

“There were three researchers from the lab that, according to American intelligence, fell ill in November 2019, and were so ill that they went to a local hospital,” Gordon replied. They could not say for sure that it was Covid-19 or seasonal flu, or what exactly caused their illnesses, “but circumstantially it’s quite significant because the first known confirmed case of Covid-19 in China is December 8th, so now here you have researchers in the lab going to the hospital just in the weeks prior to the known outbreak.

The U.S. government was very interested in this report, Gordon said, “because it could be a tell-tale sign that the virus escaped from the lab, not that it was a biological weapon or engineered by the Chinese, but perhaps they took a virus into the lab to work on a potential vaccine and it escaped.”

“A number of scientists who previously discounted the lab theory are coming around to that view,” Gordon continued, saying that he and his WSJ colleagues were “straight shooters” and “playing it down the middle and not taking an individual stance in this debate.”

“I would also say,” he concluded, “that China’s own behavior in not sharing information on the safety record of the lab, or the tests that the lab researchers may have undergone to see whether they have antibodies, by not sharing a whole host of data about people who got sick in Wuhan province, and that behavior — withholding information — has led to suspicions of, well, maybe they have something to hide?”

Watch the video above, via CNN.