The Department of Health and Human Services (HSS), obtained documents that show that at the end of December 2019 (before China revealed details of the coronavirus), that the federal government already had information containing the "almost complete sequence" of the virus structure.
The files were revealed by a demand (with threat of subpoena to HHS) from the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and were analyzed in an investigation by Warren P. Strobel of The Wall Street Journal:
Chinese researchers isolated and mapped the virus that causes Covid-19. A Chinese researcher in Beijing uploaded an almost complete sequence of the virus structure to a database managed by the US government on December 28, 2019, which raised new questions about what China knew at the crucial moment of the pandemic.
"It is important to take into account how little we know"
The media noted that -until January 11, 2020- China did not provide details about the sequence of the virus to the World Health Organization. "At the time, Chinese officials were still publicly describing the disease outbreak in Wuhan, China, as a viral pneumonia of unknown cause and had not yet closed the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, site of one of the initial Covid outbreaks. -19."
Jesse Bloom - a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle - highlighted the importance of this finding, since the database proves that "at least on December 28, 2019, scientists in China knew that this pneumonia was being caused by a new coronavirus" and they didn't reveal it.
The WSJ reveals that although "the new information does not shed light on the debate over whether Covid emerged from an infected animal or a lab leak," it does suggest that the world "still does not have a complete accounting of the pandemic's origins." Bloom noted that "it is important to keep in mind" how little is known about the virus, its origin and its spread.
