A screenshot of an online petition launched by Filipinos calling for an investigation into a laboratory at Fort Detrick in the US.
Worldwide pressure is growing on the United States to allow investigation into one of its research facility for its possible role in the global spread of COVID-19.
The latest call came from a group of Filipino journalists, entrepreneurs and scholars who have launched an online petition urging the World Health Organization to investigate the US Army Medical Research and Development Command in Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland.
The petition, which was initiated by Manila-based internet radio Global Talk News Radio, cited a laboratory incident in July 2019 which pushed the US Centers for Disease Control to shut down the facility because of “serious safety violations in particular relating to the disposal of dangerous materials”. This particular Fort Detrick “lab-leak” is believed to have caused strange “vaping sickness” and the “strange flu” in the US at that time.
“To this day, Fort Detrick remains too dangerous a mystery to be ignored by WHO experts,” reads the online petition launched by a group of Filipino journalists, entrepreneurs and scholars
“To this day, Fort Detrick remains too dangerous a mystery to be ignored by WHO experts,” reads the online petition. About 260 people have so far signed the petition that was published at Change.org.
The petitioners said it is “preposterous for the United States to be pressuring WHO and its Director-General to waste precious time by sending a second mission to Wuhan. There is no new allegation indicting China any deeper.
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On the other hand, there are too many serious and credible reports raised by the experts of other countries pointing to COVID-19 incidences in their own territories, prior to the discovery of the virus in China as of Dec 31, 2019”.
Leomil Aportedera, a Filipino lawyer and doctor, is one of the signatories of the petition. He said he signed the petition after researching about the lab incident in Fort Detrick.
He said everyone needs to focus in “widening the search net of for the source of this pandemic”.
Herman Tiu Laurel, a veteran journalist, analyst and one of the key people behind the petition drive, formally launched the petition with others in an Aug 5 virtual press briefing in Manila.
“There are many views about this virus and that’s precisely our point (which is) to expand the discussion, to expand the investigation so that we can have a thorough and comprehensive understanding (of COVID-19),” Laurel said.
He said that he will reach out to other organizations and think tanks in the Southeast Asian region to launch similar petitions.
Laurel has criticized politicizing the tracing of the virus origin. He said many “serious and credible reports” by scientists and international media companies showed the possibility that COVID-19 existed in the US, Europe and Japan even before the first COVID-19 case was reported in December 2019 in Wuhan.
READ MORE: Can the US open Fort Detrick, other labs for investigation?
In the US, the local online news site NewJersey.com reported that Michael Melcham, mayor of the town of Belleville in New Jersey, said he had tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies five months after suffering from “chills, hallucinations and a skyrocketing temperature” in November 2019, a month before Wuhan reported its first case.
Laurel also cited the World Military Games held in Wuhan in October 2019 where the wife of a Fort Detrick employee reportedly collapsed in the middle of a cycling event. He also quoted the Times of Israel report in April 2020 which said the US alerted Israel and NATO about a disease outbreak in China in November 2019.
Laurel quoted reports in France where one patient was discovered to have tested positive COVID-19 as early as Dec 27, 2019 or nearly a month before the French government confirmed its first case of COVID-19.
SARS-CoV-2 was detected in the samples collected from Italy’s Milan and Turin sewage in December 2019 and samples of wastewater from Barcelona, Spain collected in March 2019. Japan has also detected a COVID-19 infected patient as early as Aug 19, 2019.
prime@chinadailyapac.com