Bombshell report finds Chinese lab mapped COVID-19 virus weeks before China notified the world

Chinese researchers reportedly identified and mapped the COVID-19 virus weeks before China notified the world, according to a new bombshell report. The alarming findings raise serious concerns about China's transparency regarding the initial coronavirus outbreak.

According to documents obtained by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a Chinese researcher uploaded a nearly complete sequence of the COVID-19 virus structure to a U.S. database run by the National Institute of Health on Dec. 28, 2019 – two weeks before China officially notified the world about the deadly virus to the world.

The Chinese researcher has been named as Dr. Lili Ren – a virologist at the Institute of Pathogen Biology of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee noted that the Institute of Pathogen Biology of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences has ties to the Chinese Communist Party and People's Liberation Army. The Republican lawmakers also noted that Ren is a "current subgrantee of non-profit EcoHealth Alliance on the same National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) grant as the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which has been debarred from receiving NIH grants for ten years for failing to provide laboratory records requested by NIH and for conducting research that 'did lead or could lead to health issues or other unacceptable outcomes.'"

Ren reportedly tried to publish the genetic sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to GenBank – a comprehensive database of genetic sequences that is publicly available and operated by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

However, GenBank reportedly notified Ren via email three days later that her submission was incomplete and that she needed to provide additional annotations. After Ren did not provide the annotations, GenBank deleted Ren's genetic sequencing from its processing queue on Jan. 16, 2020, according to the Washington Post.

Interestingly enough, a different team of Chinese researchers submitted a "nearly identical" genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 to GenBank that was published on Jan. 12, 2020, according to a letter sent to the House Energy and Commerce Committee leaders from Melanie Anne Egorin – a senior official at the HHS.

China didn't officially notify the World Health Organization about the COVID-19 sequence until Jan. 12, 2020.

Before the virus was identified as a novel coronavirus, Beijing had maintained the outbreak was a cluster of cases of pneumonia "of unknown cause" in Wuhan, Hubei Province. Chinese officials linked the outbreak to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan.

"The existence of a SARS-CoV-2 sequence days before the CCP acknowledged an outbreak, and more than two weeks before the China CDC release their sequence, calls into question how early the CCP knew about the virus and how long they withheld this information from the world, resulting in more deaths and wasting critical time to develop vaccines and treatments," said Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Republicans said the Biden administration, the NIH, and HHS have "obstructed and delayed Congressional investigations into the origins of SARS-CoV-2" and "refused to produce this sequence for over seven months."

The sequence was only released to the House Energy and Commerce Committee after it had threatened subpoenas.

Committee Chair Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), and Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) said, "This significant discovery further underscores why we cannot trust any of the so-called ‘facts’ or data provided by the CCP and calls into serious question the legitimacy of any scientific theories based on such information."

"The American people deserve to know the truth about the origins of SARS-CoV-2, and our investigation has uncovered numerous causes for concern, including how taxpayers’ dollars are spent, how our government’s public health agencies operate, and the need for more oversight into research grants to foreign scientists," the Republican representatives stated on Wednesday. "In addition to equipping us to better prepare for the next pandemic, this investigation’s findings will help us as policymakers as we work to strengthen America’s biosafety practices and bolster oversight of research grants."

The Wall Street Journal reported, "Having the virus information two weeks earlier 'would have helped in the early stages of the outbreak,' particularly with putting a more effective testing regimen in place, said Richard Ebright, a microbiologist at Rutgers University."

Jesse Bloom – a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle – told the Washington Post, "That two weeks would have made a tangible difference in quite a few people’s lives."

There have been an estimated 7 million COVID-19 deaths.

The Chinese Embassy told the WSJ, "China has kept refining our COVID response based on science to make it more targeted. China’s COVID response policies are science-based, effective, and consistent with China’s national realities. They can stand the test of history."

Ren did not respond to a request for comment from the Wall Street Journal.

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