A Chinese virologist who has reportedly been in hiding for fear of her safety has stepped out into the public eye again to make the explosive claim that she has the scientific evidence to prove COVID-19 was man-made in a lab in China.
Dr. Li-Meng Yan, a scientist who says she did some of the earliest research into COVID-19 last year, made the comments Friday during an interview on British talk show “Loose Women.”
When asked where the deadly virus that has killed more than 900,000 around the globe comes from, Yan — speaking via video chat from a secret location — replied, “It comes from the lab — the lab in Wuhan and the lab is controlled by China’s government.”
She insisted that widespread reports that the virus originated last year from a wet market in Wuhan, China, are “a smokescreen.”
“The first thing is the [meat] market in Wuhan … is a smokescreen and this virus is not from nature,” Yan claimed, explaining that she got “her intelligence from the CDC in China, from the local doctors.”
The virologist has previously accused Beijing of lying about when it learned of the killer bug and engaging in an extensive cover-up of her work.
She had said that her former supervisors at the Hong Kong School of Public Health, a reference laboratory for the World Health Organization, silenced her when she sounded the alarm about human-to-human transmission in December last year.
In April, Yan reportedly fled Hong Kong and escaped to America to raise awareness about the pandemic.
A transmission electron microscope image of SARS-CoV-2, also known as COVID-19.
Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Now, she said she is planning to release scientific evidence to prove that the virus was made inside a lab in Wuhan.
“The genome sequence is like a human finger print,” she told the talk show. “So based on this you can identify these things. I use the evidence … to tell people why this has come from the lab in China, why they are the only ones who made it.”
Yan added, “Anyone, even if you have no biology knowledge, you can read it, and you can check and identify and verify by yourself.”
“This is the critical thing for us to know the origin of the virus,” she said. “If not we cannot overcome it — it will be life-threatening for everyone.”
She said she is coming out now because “I know if I don’t tell the truth to the world, I will be regretful.”
Yan also claimed that before fleeing China, her information was wiped from government databases.
“They deleted all my information,” she told “Loose Women,” claiming that people have been recruited “to spread rumors about me, that I’m a liar.”
Yuan Zhiming, the director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, has previously denied reports that the bug accidentally spread from his facility.
“There’s no way this virus came from us,” Zhiming told state media in April.
