US authorities were allegedly warned by a Chinese pro-democracy activist that coronavirus was spreading in Wuhan in November 2019 – six weeks before China admitted there was an outbreak – a new Sky News Australia documentary will reveal.
A Chinese pro-democracy activist said he attempted to warn the US about the emergence of COVID-19 when he first heard of a mysterious new virus in October 2019, an explosive documentary airing exclusively on Sky News Australia has uncovered.
Wei Jingsheng, a pro-democracy activist spoke to award-winning journalist Sharri Markson for a documentary titled, ‘What Really Happened in Wuhan‘, also based on his book of the same name.
The former Chinese Communist Party insider said he alerted the intelligence agencies in the US in November 2019 but at that time, officials weren’t “heavily concerned”.
“I felt they were not as heavily concerned as I was so I tried my best to provide more detailed information,” he told Ms Markson.
“They may not believe there is (a) government of a country that would do something like that (cover up a virus). So I kept repeating myself in an effort to try to persuade them.”
China only alerted the World Health Organisation there was an outbreak on December 31 2019 and denied it was contagious up until late January 2020.
Mr Wei said he found out about the virus from high-level contacts in Beijing, and spoke to American politicians from the White House in November 2019.
Asked who the politician was, Mr Wei replied: “I’m not sure if this politician wants me to talk about him right here. But I want to say he is a high enough politician, high enough to be able to reach the President of the United States.”
David Asher, the US State Department’s former lead investigator, said the government failed to detect the urgency of the virus, admitting that if they had reacted to it, it would have been “like stopping 9/11 before it happened”.
“We could have known in November of 2019, that there was a disaster occurring inside Wuhan – inside their most important biological facilities related to coronavirus research,” he said.
“It was something absolutely tragic, traumatic and dramatic that was occurring and we could have reacted to it. The whole world could have been different. It would have been like stopping 9/11 before it happened.”
COVID-19 has taken the lives of more than 4.5 million people, and has destroyed the lives and economy of more than 200 countries worldwide.
Sharri Markson is an Investigations Editor at The Australian and host of Sharri on Sky News Australia.
By Crystal Wu
Read Original Article on SkyNews.au
The documentary What Really Happened in Wuhan will air exclusively on Sky News at 8pm on Monday, September 20.
