Newly released documents reveal deadly viruses were shipped last year from Canada’s National Microbiology Lab to China. The lab that received them in China was the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
There has been much focus on the WIV in recent months as many suspect it is the true source of the outbreak of Covid19. Hard evidence of that has yet to be revealed.
Canadian authorities say the shipment and the current Covid19 outbreak are not related.
The shipment contained two vials each of 15 strains of viruses including Ebola, Hendra and Sudan Gulu.
Adding to the suspicion is that fact that several scientists were recently escorted from Canada’s only biosafety level-4 laboratory. Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, her husband Keding Cheng and several of her students from China were removed over what’s being called a “policy breach.”
But the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) says Qiu’s removal is not related to the shipment to China.
“The administrative investigation is not related to the shipment of virus samples to China,” Eric Morrissette, chief of media relations for Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada wrote in an email.
The shipment was set to be sent on a public flight. It was only after the Chinese raised flags about that shipping method that it was revised.
“The only reason the correct packaging was used is because the Chinese wrote to them and said, ‘Aren’t you making a mistake here?’ If that had not happened, the scientists would have placed on an Air Canada flight, several of them actually, a deadly virus incorrectly packaged. That nearly happened,” Amir Attaran told CBC. Attaran is a law professor and epidemiologist at the University of Ottawa.
The package was sent from Winnipeg to Toronto and then to Beijing on a commercial Air Canada flight in March, 2019.