A whistleblower has sensationally claimed China deliberately spread Covid at a military tournament two months before the rest of the world knew about the deadly virus.
Ex-Chinese Communist Party insider Wei Jingsheng said The World Military Games in October 2019 could have acted as the virus' first superspreader event.
The international tournament for military athletes was held in Wuhan - the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic - two months before China notified the World Health Organisation about its first cases.
Mr Jingsheng claimed it was no coincidence some of the 9,000 international athletes who gathered for the event reportedly became sick with a mystery illness.
Pictured: The opening ceremony of the 7th CISM Military World Games in Wuhan in October 2019. Some of the 9,000 athletes who gathered for the tournament reportedly became sick with a mystery illness two months before China told the world about its first Covid-19 cases
While China has tried to insist the virus originated elsewhere, academics, politicians and the media have contemplated the possibility it leaked from a high-level biochemical lab in Wuhan - raising suspicions that Chinese officials simply hid evidence of the early spread
'I thought the Chinese government would take this opportunity to spread the virus during the Military Games, as many foreigners would show up there,' he told the new Sky News documentary What Really Happened in Wuhan.
The whistleblower claimed he had heard of the Chinese government carrying out an 'unusual exercise' during the games.
'[I knew] of the possibility of the Chinese government using some strange weapons, including biological weapons, because I knew they were doing experiments of that sort,' he said.
His claims were supported by the former Principal China Adviser to the US State Department Miles Yu.
He said French, German and American athletes were among those to fall ill at the tournament with Covid-like symptoms, but were never tested for the virus.
Wei Jingsheng (pictured) claims China deliberately spread Covid at a military tournament two months before the rest of the world knew about the deadly new virus
'We see some indications in our own data… that there was Covid circulating in the United States as early as early December, possibly earlier than that,' ex-US State Department Covid-19 investigator David Asher said.
Mr Jingsheng also claims he took his concerns about the unfolding situation to senior figures within the Trump administration in November 2019 but was ignored.
The long-time democracy campaigner, who has served time in prison for 'counter-revolutionary activities', said he made the approach as whispers of a 'new SARS virus' began circulating on WeChat and other Chinese social media platforms.
'I felt they were not as concerned as I was, so I tried my best to provide more detail and information,' he said.
'They may not believe that a government of a country would do something like that (cover up a virus), so I kept repeating myself in an effort … to persuade them.'
Xi Jinping's authoritarian regime tried desperately to shut down whistle-blowers and silence any discussion of the virus in the early stages of the Wuhan outbreak - even when an untold number of corpses started flooding the city's hospitals.
Any references made in social media about a new SARS virus or 'outbreak' were censored and brave medical staff who tried to speak out and warn the world were detained and forced to sign false confessions of panic-stirring.
Mr Jingsheng who was exiled to the US years earlier said he was aware of what was happening through Beijing Communist Party insiders who shared their fears about the situation and described the central government cover-up.
But despite the impending health crisis set to devastate the US and the rest of the globe, his message was not being taken seriously, he claims.
The Chinese dissident would not disclose which political leaders he spoke to but insisted they were senior government figures and had the ear of then-President Donald Trump.
'I'm not sure if this politician wants me to talk about him right here,' he said.
'But I want to say he is a high enough politician, high enough to be able to reach the President of the United States.'
As coronavirus cases continued to ravage China, the authoritarian state kept the outbreak hidden from the WHO until December 31, when it was no longer possible to contain knowledge of its existence.
But even then, Beijing denied the virus could be transmitted from person to person until eventually coming clean a month at the end of January.
The WHO labelled the mysterious outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January 2020, as infections started sweeping across other nations including the US earlier that same month.
In August this year, Dr Peter Embarek, who led the WHO probe into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic in China, said the world's first Covid-19 patient may have been infected by a bat while working for a Wuhan lab in China.
Dr Embarek made the shocking claim despite initially dismissing the notion that the virus escaped from a lab as extremely unlikely.
Embarek later admitted that the lab leak theory could have happened, suggesting that a Chinese researcher could have been infected by a bat while taking samples in connection with research at a Wuhan lab.
Some have suggested the source of the virus was the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese lab that is the world's largest centre of research on coronaviruses.
They believe the virus was either uncovered at the lab - which collects coronaviruses from wild animals - or else engineered through 'gain of function' research.
Such research involves adding properties such as increased transmissibility to already-existing viruses to study the effects and develop treatments before such diseases crop up in the wild.
But the research is hugely controversial, with many scientists arguing the risks of creating such viruses far outweigh the potential benefits.
According to proponents of this theory, the virus then leaked from the lab - possibly by infecting staff who then unwittingly passed it to the general population.
One intelligence report passed to agencies in Washington claims three members of staff at the laboratory sought hospital treatment in November 2019 - a month before the first official cases of Covid were detected, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Their symptoms were 'consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness', the report says, calling for further investigation.
That tallies with a body of evidence suggesting Covid may have been circulating for months before China first reported it to the world - either as a result of the often-mild disease going undetected, or the result of a cover-up.
Scientists in Italy claim to have detected evidence of Covid in blood samples taken as far back as September 2019, while researchers in Spain say the disease could have been present there in January 2020 - months before the first official case.
Even the authors of the much-derided WHO report admitted they could not rule out the possibility that Covid was circulating before December 2019.
But it was not until December 31, 2019 that the WHO's China office was informed of a mystery pneumonia which had sickened 44 people in Wuhan.
Later, the WHO was informed that at least one patient in Wuhan - a major transport hub - had been showing symptoms as early as December 8.
Local residents line up for nucleic acid testing at a temporary Covid-19 testing center on June 12, 2021 in Guangzhou, China
Wuhan doctor Li Wenliang (pictured, left and right) blew the whistle on the mysterious new coronavirus in December 2019 and died in February 2020 after contracting the virus from a patient
The Chinese dissident would not disclose which political leaders he spoke to but insisted they were senior government figures and had the ear of then-President Donald Trump (pictured in April)
A book by award-winning Australian Journalist Sharri Markson, with the same title as the documentary, will be released on September 29
Chinese scientists and officials have been keen to point the finger of blame outside their own borders - variously suggesting that the virus could have originated in Bangladesh, the US, Greece, Australia, India, Italy, Czech Republic, Russia or Serbia
Multiple countries have uncovered evidence that the virus was circulating months earlier than originally thought. While Beijing has tried to insist this proves the virus originated elsewhere, most scientists still think China was the origin - raising the prospect that communist officials simply hid evidence of the early spread
A separate WHO-backed report said it was 'clear' that 'public health measures could have been applied more forcefully by local and national health authorities in China' last January.
It said there was 'potential for early signs to have been acted on more rapidly' by both China and the WHO.
The criticism was at odds with the WHO's public statements at the time, when it praised China for the 'remarkable speed' with which it responded to the outbreak.
Beijing has touted its recovery from the early outbreak as a triumph for its Communist leaders, with China's economy the only major one to grow in 2020.
But numerous reports have detailed how China withheld key details about the virus in its early stages, including from the WHO which has praised China in public
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