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But the coincidence of China’s single biosafety level-4 laboratory — the highest-grade facility for handling infectious disease — being located in Wuhan itself has been manna for Internet-based conspiracists. Maybe, they argue, a bio-engineered virus or even a bio-weapon was released into the general population, deliberately or not.

There was never any actual evidence of that happening, and a study last month seemed to put an end to the conjecture, concluding that the virus was a result of natural evolution, not human manipulation.

But the notion that a natural coronavirus being studied at the lab — or another, lower-level research facility in Wuhan — had escaped earned at least some credence with the Washington Post report.

In January, a research paper concluded that the first known COVID-19 patient had no link to the live-animal market

It quoted a cable sent by U.S. diplomats to the State Department in 2018 after visits to the BSL-4 facility that raised concern that sub-standard safety there could lead to a pandemic.

“The new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” the Post quoted the cable as saying.

The diplomats also went on to discuss the public-health importance of the research on SARS-like coronaviruses the lab was carrying out, and urged the U.S. government provide more help to the WIV facility.

None was forthcoming, according to the Washington Post.

There are other facts that have fuelled speculation about the BSL-4 establishment, and the city’s lower-level Wuhan Center for Disease Control lab.

One is the conclusion in a January research paper that the first known COVID-19 patient had no link to that live-animal market.