WUHAN: The director of a maximum security laboratory in China’s coronavirus ground-zero city of Wuhan has rejected claims that it could be the source of the outbreak, calling it “impossible”.
Beijing has come under increasing pressure over transparency in its handling of the pandemic, with the US probing whether the virus actually originated in a virology institute with a high-security biosafety laboratory.
Chinese scientists have said the virus likely jumped from an animal to humans in a market that sold wildlife.
But the existence of the facility has fuelled conspiracy theories that the germ spread from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, specifically its P4 laboratory which is equipped to handle dangerous viruses.
In an interview with state media published Saturday Yuan Zhiming, director of the laboratory, said that “there’s no way this virus came from us”.–Agencies
