Ten Q&As on Origin Studying of the COVID-19 (9)

Q: According to an intelligence report by the United States, some researchers with Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill in autumn 2019. Also, cases of sick mine workers in Mojiang County, Yunan Province were reported as early as 2012. What is your comment on that?

A: China has made it clear many times that Wuhan Institute of Virology has never designed, manufactured or leaked novel coronavirus, nor has it conducted any gain-of-function studies on coronavirus. So far, none of the staff and graduate students at the Wuhan Institute of Virology has contracted the novel coronavirus. As to the illness of miners in Mojiang County, Yunnan province, we did not detect bat coronavirus in the serum samples of the miners through nucleic acid, antibody or genome sequencing tests. This suggests that these cases are unrelated to COVID-19.