Yamato Aoba
A New Infectious Disease Pandemic May Start in China
On May 5, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the end of the “public health emergency of international concern” regarding the new coronavirus. In Japan, the status under the Infectious Disease Control Law was downgraded from “category 2 equivalent” to “category 5 infectious disease” on May 8.
After more than three full years of endurance, daily life is finally about to return to normal.
However, there is a growing sense of crisis in the U.S. that this could lead to another pandemic. It seems that the sloppy management system in China’s virus laboratories and vaccine factories is still largely unimproved.
In April, the Washington Post pointed out inadequate management systems in Chinese laboratories and other facilities, and pointed out that another pandemic could erupt. The article, titled “Difficulty in Ensuring Laboratory Safety in China Spreads Danger of Another Pandemic,” strongly emphasized the sense of urgency.
The paper stated that multiple thorough investigations into the safety of labs in China have been carried out by scientists and legislators in the U.S. and around the world. The in-depth investigations have “drawn attention to the deadly pathogen that has been leaked and could recur in the future, possibly triggering a new pandemic,” the paper warned.
10,000 people infected, severe pain and sweating…Leak at Chinese laboratory
As a concrete example of the sloppy management system, the paper highlights a pathogen leak that occurred at a pharmaceutical factory in the inland city of Lanzhou in the summer of 2019. A 39-year-old man who lives just one block away from the factory recalls that his health inexplicably deteriorated in the fall of 2019.
The man told China’s state-run news website that he suffered from severe back pain, sweating, drowsiness, and swelling. The man was hospitalized and received antibiotics over the next several months. He had brucellosis.
This infection is caused by the introduction of Brucella spp. into the body from ingesting contaminated dairy products or inhaling aerosols. The disease mainly presents with flu-like symptoms, but in rare cases it can cause endocarditis and lead to death.
According to the Washington Post, health officials in Gansu Province investigated and found that at least 10,000 of the nearly 70,000 people tested tested positive. A man says, “As far as I know, there is an infected person in almost every household in the area.
Chinese Government Covered Up “Largest Laboratory Accident in the History of Infectious Diseases”
The pharmaceutical factory in question was manufacturing a vaccine for brucellosis. Because of its location, surrounded by high-rise condominiums, it is clear that once a leak occurred, it would have a tremendous impact on the residents. However, the biological treatment system was clearly inadequate.
In the production of this vaccine, live bacteria are injected into fermentation tanks, and at the end of the process, a chemical disinfectant is used to kill the pathogens. But the Washington Post, based on information from local media, reported that the plant had been using chemicals well beyond their expiration date since July 2019. The waste treatment process did not function at the designed level, causing many bacteria to be discharged live to the outside world.
Georgios Pappas, a Greek physician specializing in infectious diseases, noted through his report that “the gases emitted contained pathogens known to be easily aerosolized, which were carried by the southeasterly wind.” The result, he says, “was the largest laboratory accident in the history of infectious diseases.
However, the government’s cover-up of the accident prevented the spread of information about this incident. More than three years after the accident, there is no official record of the more than 10,000 people who suffered health problems as a result of the leak. It’s as if the patients never existed,” Pappas retorted.
Why the U.S. government claims that the new coronavirus spread from China
The theory of the origin of the new coronavirus has been proposed as a natural origin, with wild animals and markets as the source of the virus. On the other hand, the theory that it was caused by a leak from a virus laboratory in Wuhan is still supported by several U.S. government agencies.
As recently as April 2020, shortly after the pandemic’s arrival, Voice of America, a U.S. state-owned radio broadcaster, noted that the Wuhan lab, which stores more than 1,500 viruses, “has been a source of concern among U.S. officials for at least two years.”
In a February 2020 interview by China’s state-run media outlet, the Huangyu Times, Yang Zhangqi, director of the Department of Pathogen Biology at Wuhan University, noted that “Chinese laboratories are not paying enough attention to biological waste.” He said that waste from laboratories can contain man-made viruses, bacteria, and microorganisms that can be fatal to animals, including humans.
The paper also recalls that another coronavirus leak occurred in 2004: a small outbreak of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) coronavirus, which the paper notes was caused by inadequate virus inactivation processing at the laboratory.
