Nestled in the hilly outskirts of the city at the heart of the coronavirus crisis, a Chinese high-security biosafety laboratory is now the subject of US claims it may be the cradle of the pandemic.
Chinese scientists have said the virus likely jumped from an animal to humans in a market that sold wildlife in Wuhan, but the existence of the lab has fuelled conspiracy theories that the germ spread from the facility.
The 300 million yuan lab was completed in 2015, and finally opened in 2018, with the founder of a French bio-industrial firm, Alain Merieux, acting as a consultant in its construction.The 3000-square-metre P4 lab, located in a square building with a cylindrical annex, lies near a pond at the foot of a forested hill in Wuhan's remote outskirts.
President Donald Trump, asked about the lab theory, said that"more and more, we're hearing the story" and that the United States was"doing a very thorough investigation". It said it received samples of the then-unknown virus on December 30, determined the viral genome sequence on 2 January and submitted information on the pathogen to the World Health Organization on 11 January.
But a study by a group of Chinese scientists published in The Lancet in January revealed that the first Covid-19 patient had no connection to Wuhan's infamous animal market, and neither did 13 of the first 41 confirmed cases.
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