China reported to the World Health Organization that the first patient with Covid-like symptoms was recorded in Wuhan on December 8, 2019. The director of the Wuhan National Biosafety Lab, which is part of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, issued a strong denial of the report on Monday. The lab has not been aware of this situation, and I don't even know where such information came from." The source declined to say whether the intelligence report mentioning the hospitalized researchers was discussed during the briefing. One critical avenue to finding an answer would be to run genetic sequencing on the original samples that staff at the Wuhan lab were working on.

Source: CNN May 23, 2021 23:15 UTC