A state-of-the art facility purpose-built to handle research into the world's most deadly pathogens, the Wuhan Institute of Virology played a crucial role in identifying the virus now known as Covid-19. It was Shi Zhengli, the laboratory's globally respected expert in the transmission of animal-born coronavirus to humans, who led a team that worked round the clock to establish the cause of the mysterious disease that appeared in Wuhan, a city of 11 million on the Yangtze river 600 miles south of Beijing, in late December. Now Donald Trump has accused the laboratory of causing the very pandemic it helped identify - to the fury of scientists and Chinese authorities. “We’re going to see where it comes from,” Mr Trump said at a White House event late on Thursday. “We have people looking at it very, very strongly. Scientific people, intelligence people, and others. We’re going to put it all together. I think we will have a very good answer eventually. And China might even tell us.” Mr Trump refused to say what, if any, intelligence he had seen suggesting Covid-19 may have originated in the WIV. He wasn't allowed to tell us, he said. The United States Intelligence Community on Friday said it - like most scientists - had ruled out the theory that the virus had been manmade or genetically modified, but did say it was looking into the possibility it escaped as "a result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan." That, experts say, is highly unlikely. But far from impossible.
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