China confirms unauthorised labs were told to destroy early coronavirus samples
- National health authority says this was done for biosafety reasons and to ‘prevent secondary disasters caused by unidentified pathogens’
- US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said Beijing declined to provide samples and destroyed them at the start of the outbreak
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has repeatedly said that Beijing declined to provide virus samples taken from patients when the contagion began in China late last year, and that Chinese authorities had destroyed early samples.
Liu Dengfeng, an official with the National Health Commission’s science and education department, said this was done at unauthorised labs to “prevent the risk to laboratory biological safety and prevent secondary disasters caused by unidentified pathogens”.
“The remarks made by some US officials were taken out of context and intended to confuse,” he said at a briefing in Beijing.
When the pneumonia-like illness was first reported in Wuhan, “national-level professional institutes” were working to identify the pathogen that was causing it, Liu said.
