US officials sounded alarm about Wuhan lab years before coronavirus outbreak

U.S. Embassy officials warned about safety risks at a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan researching infectious diseases, including coronaviruses from bats, sending warning cables back to the United States two years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of the two “Sensitive but Unclassified” State Department cables, obtained by the Washington Post, warned in January 2018 about biosecurity and management problems at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, China’s first level 4 biosafety lab, located just miles from the Wuhan wet market to which most, but not all, of the earliest COVID-19 cases were traced. The warnings followed repeated visits by U.S. science diplomats sent by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.