Fauci Calls on China to Release Medical Records of Wuhan Lab Workers

NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci listens during a Senate Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services Subcommittee hearing looking into the budget estimates for National Institute of Health and state of medical research on Capitol Hill in Washington, on May 26, 2021. (Sarah Silbiger/Pool/Getty Images)

Dr. Anthony Fauci has called on China to release the medical records of nine people whose ailments might provide vital clues into whether COVID-19 first emerged as the result of a lab leak, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.

“I would like to see the medical records of the three people who are reported to have got sick in 2019. Did they really get sick, and if so, what did they get sick with?” the report quoted Fauci as saying.

The State Department released a fact sheet on Jan. 15 stating that researchers at a Chinese virology laboratory in Wuhan were seriously ill in 2019, a month before the first COVID-19 cases were reported.

Chinese scientists and officials have consistently rejected the lab leak hypothesis, claiming the virus could have circulated in other regions before it hit Wuhan and might have even entered China through imported frozen food shipments or wildlife trading.

Security personnel keep watch outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology during the visit by the World Health Organization (WHO) team tasked with investigating the origins of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, on Feb. 3, 2021. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)

A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, Wang Wenbin, declined to comment directly on whether China would release the records.

Financial Times reported that Fauci continues to believe the virus was first transmitted to humans through animals, pointing out that even if the lab researchers did have COVID-19, they could have contracted the disease from the wider population.

By Eva Mathews