China Denies Claim Of Illness At Wuhan Lab Before Covid Outbreak In 2019

China said reports that three researchers in Wuhan went to hospital with an illness shortly before the coronavirus emerged in the city was "totally untrue".

China on Monday dismissed as "totally untrue" reports that three researchers in Wuhan went to hospital with an illness shortly before the coronavirus emerged in the city and spread around the globe. Since infecting its first victims in the central Chinese city in late 2019, the pathogen has afflicted almost every country in the world, killing more than 3.4 million people and pummelling national economies. Beijing has always fiercely fought the theory that it could have escaped from one of its laboratories. Citing a US intelligence report, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the trio from the Wuhan Institute of Virology were affected as early as November 2019, suffering from "symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness".