Republic TV on Friday reported from outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology amid the increasing demand for an impartial probe into the origin of COVID-19. Speculation has been rife around the world that the novel coronavirus was leaked from the aforesaid lab. Reporting live for Republic TV, senior journalist Anil Pandey showed the visuals of the place including the lab building situated in a deserted place away from the city and near a forest. Mentioning that China has consistently refuted the ‘lab leak’ theory, he added that the local media has projected it as a conspiracy hatched by the US.
Objecting to any investigation within the country, China has called for such probes to be conducted in other countries where such virology labs exist. Weighing in on the situation in Wuhan, he affirmed that the situation is back to normal to the extent that some people do not even wear masks barring for public transport. Living in China since 2009, Pandey recalled that Beijing seemed like a “ghost city” where he landed there in January 2020 owing to the COVID-19 crisis.
Recalling that Wuhan was completely locked for months whereby residents were not even allowed to step out of their homes, he opined that China’s tough measures to deal with the pandemic had probably prevented the occurrence of a second and third wave in the country. On May 19, Republic TV had reported live from Republic TV from Huanan Seafood Market. Other seafood markets and the wet markets in Wuhan are yet to be opened completely.
The COVID-19 origin debate
Republic Media Network has been leading the campaign #ChinaCOVIDTruth, with many experts from around the globe calling for a re-examination of the origin of the virus. Dr. Ravindra Gupta, a Professor of Clinical Microbiology at the University of Cambridge and one of the 18 scientists who wrote an open letter in Science magazine asking the world community to have a relook at the COVID-19 origin. American scholar and Chairman of Stockton Centre James Kraska also spoke to Republic & had elaborated on his research into the origins of the Coronavirus and extensive evidence documents on its birth in a laboratory in China.
Significantly, bringing back the focus on the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 (hereafter also referred to as SARS2), which has caused the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic and claimed over 3 million lives across the globe, noted British science writer Nicholas Wade has self-published papers re-igniting the discourse on whether the deadly virus was developed in a lab or whether it was naturally transmitted into humans from bats, as claimed thus far. The present debate was also ignited by a military document titled ‘The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons’. It spoke about the Chinese military’s plans with regards to bioweapons.