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Wuhan Lab was built by the French
Inside the Wuhan lab: French engineering, deadly viruses and a big mystery
Eva Dou, Pei Lin Wu, Quentin Ariès, Rebecca Tan 9/7/2021
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One chilly morning in February 2017, a tall Chinese scientist in his 50s named Yuan Zhiming showed Bernard Cazeneuve, then the French prime minister, around Wuhanβs new high-security pathogen lab.
Bernard Cazeneuve et al. standing in front of a door: Bernard Cazeneuve, front right, then the prime minister of France, visits the P4 lab in Wuhan on Feb. 23, 2017.Β© JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images Bernard Cazeneuve, front right, then the prime minister of France, visits the P4 lab in Wuhan on Feb. 23, 2017.
Built with French engineering, it was Chinaβs first P4 lab, one of several dozen in the world with that highest security designation. Yuan, the director of the lab, had worked more than a decade to make it a reality.
Yuan and his colleagues at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) hoped they could help prevent another catastrophe like the SARS outbreak in 2003, which embarrassed Beijing and resulted in the dismissal of the health minister.
But just a couple of years after the P4 labβs ribbon-cutting, China was engulfed in a far deadlier outbreak. Yuanβs team had not prevented it. And worse, some suspected that lab personnel might have been involved in its genesis.
Yuan has vociferously denied that the WIV had any part in the coronavirus pandemicβs origins. βThe Wuhan P4 lab has never seen any laboratory leaks or human infections since it began operating in 2018,β Yuan said at a news conference in July.
Amid the scrutiny, the WIV has turned inward. Yuan said at the news conference that his team took a virus database offline because of βthe large number of malicious attacks,β and he complained that he and his colleagues are under great pressure from rumors.
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U.S. intelligence agencies said in a report last month that the virus was not a biological weapon and that itβs unclear whether it originated naturally or from a laboratory-associated incident. The report said confirmation is unlikely without Chinaβs cooperation, which Beijing withdrew in July.
For Yuan and his team, it means the cloud of suspicion lingers. After their high hopes, itβs a disappointment.
βScientific collaboration in virology β itβs gone,β said a foreign researcher who has worked for years with the WIV and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the hostile political climate. βNow, the Chinese will not welcome foreigners because their view is youβre coming in to dig dirt.β
This account of the WIVβs 65-year history, its coronavirus research and its P4 lab is based on interviews with visiting scientists, lab audit reports, satellite images, archival records and other documentation. The WIV did not respond to requests for comment.
'Best of the best'
The P4 lab, left, on the campus of the WIV on May 27, 2020. The lab was based on one in Lyon, France.Β© HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty Images The P4 lab, left, on the campus of the WIV on May 27, 2020. The lab was based on one in Lyon, France.
The P4 lab is located off an eight-lane road on Wuhanβs southern industrial outskirts, where factories give way to low mountains and farmland. The lab facilities cover roughly two football fields, on a tract of land 12 times as large, according to a June 2018 environmental safety audit report.
The buildingβs austere gray lines are softened by trees: From 2005 to 2015, when the lab was under construction, scientists would drive out on Arbor Day to add a few more saplings to the perimeter.
Based on the French P4 lab in Lyon, the building has four floors: waste management at the bottom; experimental labs and animal rooms on the main floor; and on the top two, apparatuses to ensure safe airflow, the report says.
Visitors called it state-of-the-art, in contrast to other, aging WIV buildings, where scientists wore coats indoors in winter because of scant heating.
The lab had βthe newest technology, a huge complex,β recalled Boris Klempa, a Slovak Academy of Sciences researcher who visited in 2017.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/inside-the-wuhan-lab-french-engineering-deadly-viruses-and-a-big-mystery/ar-AAOaUW6