WASHINGTON—Chinese researchers isolated and mapped the virus that causes Covid-19 in late December 2019, at least two weeks before Beijing revealed details of the deadly virus to the world, congressional investigators said, raising questions anew about what China knew in the pandemic’s crucial early days.
华盛顿——国会调查人员称，中国研究人员于 2019 年 12 月下旬分离并绘制了引起武汉肺炎的病毒图谱，这比北京向世界披露这种致命病毒的细节至少早了两周，这再次引发了人们对中国在疫情早期究竟了解多少的质疑。
Documents obtained from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by a House committee and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show that a Chinese researcher in Beijing uploaded a nearly complete sequence of the virus’s structure to a U.S. government-run database on Dec. 28, 2019. Chinese officials at that time were still publicly describing the disease outbreak in Wuhan, China, as a viral pneumonia “of unknown cause” and had yet to close the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, site of one of the initial Covid-19 outbreaks.
众议院委员会从美国卫生与公众服务部获得并经《华尔街日报》审阅的文件显示，北京的一名中国研究人员于 12 月 28 日将几乎完整的病毒结构序列上传到美国政府运营的数据库中。 2019年。当时，中国官员仍在公开将中国武汉爆发的疾病描述为“原因不明”的病毒性肺炎，并且尚未关闭华南海鲜批发市场，该市场是武汉肺炎最初的爆发地之一。
China only shared the virus’s sequence with the World Health Organization on Jan. 11, 2020, according to U.S. government timelines of the pandemic.
根据美国政府的疫情时间表，中国直到 2020 年 1 月 11 日才向世界卫生组织分享了该病毒的序列。
The new information doesn’t shed light on the debate over whether Covid emerged from an infected animal or a lab leak, but it suggests that the world still doesn’t have a full accounting of the pandemic’s origin.
这些新信息并没有阐明关于武汉肺炎是来自受感染动物还是实验室泄漏的争论，但它表明世界仍然没有对疫情的起源有完整的解释。
The extra two weeks could have proved crucial in helping the international medical community pinpoint how Covid-19 spread, develop medical defenses and get started on an eventual vaccine, specialists have said. In late 2019, scientists and governments worldwide were racing to understand the mystery disease eventually named Covid-19 that would kill millions and sicken many more.
专家表示，这额外的两周可能对于帮助国际医学界查明武汉肺炎的传播方式、制定医疗防御措施以及开始研制最终的疫苗起到至关重要的作用。 2019 年底，世界各地的科学家和政府都在竞相了解这种最终被命名为武汉肺炎的神秘疾病，这种疾病将导致数百万人死亡，并使更多人患病。
It “underscores how cautious we have to be about the accuracy of the information that the Chinese government has released,” said Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle who has reviewed the documents and the recently discovered gene sequence. “It’s important to keep in mind how little we know.”
西雅图弗雷德哈钦森癌症中心的病毒学家杰西·布鲁姆（Jesse Bloom）审查了这些文件和最近发现的基因序列，他说，这“凸显了我们必须对中国政府发布的信息的准确性保持谨慎”。 “重要的是要记住我们所知甚少。”
The Chinese researcher who submitted the virus sequence, Dr. Lili Ren of the Beijing-based Institute of Pathogen Biology, didn’t respond to an email seeking comment. The institute is part of the state-affiliated Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.
提交病毒序列的中国研究人员、北京病原体生物学研究所的任丽丽博士没有回复寻求置评的电子邮件。 该研究所隶属于国有的中国医学科学院。
![]()
“China has kept refining our COVID response based on science to make it more targeted,” a Chinese Embassy spokesperson said. “China’s COVID response policies are science-based, effective, and consistent with China’s national realities. They can stand the test of history.”
中国大使馆发言人表示：“中方在科学的基础上不断完善我们的武汉肺炎疫情应对措施，使其更有针对性。” “中国的疫情应对政策科学、有效，符合中国国情。 他们经得起历史的考验。”
The documents describing a new timeline were obtained by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee after the committee threatened to subpoena HHS.
众议院能源和商业委员会的共和党人在威胁要传唤美国卫生与公众服务部后获得了描述新时间表的文件。
Melanie Egorin, HHS assistant secretary for legislation, wrote last month to the committee’s chair, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.), that Ren submitted the virus sequence on Dec. 28, 2019, to a genetic database, GenBank, run by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
美国卫生与公众服务部负责立法的助理部长梅兰妮·埃戈林 (Melanie Egorin) 上个月写信给委员会主席、众议员凯茜·麦克莫里斯·罗杰斯 (Cathy McMorris Rodgers)（华盛顿州共和党），称任丽丽于 2019 年 12 月 28 日向基因数据库 GenBank 提交了病毒序列， 由美国国立卫生研究院管理。
The first known publication of the sequence of the Covid virus, called SARS-CoV-2, came on Jan. 11, 2020, after Chinese authorities shared the information with the World Health Organization. In addition, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta says the virus sequence was shared within China with China’s equivalent of the CDC on Jan. 5 but not made known globally to scientists.
2020 年 1 月 11 日，中国当局与世界卫生组织分享了有关武汉肺炎序列的信息后，首次公布了该病毒的序列。 此外，亚特兰大疾病控制与预防中心表示，该病毒序列已于 1 月 5 日在中国境内与中国的疾病预防控制中心（CDC）共享，但并未向全球科学家透露。
The sequence that Ren provided in December 2019 was never published and was deleted from the database on Jan. 16, 2020, after NIH, following its protocols, asked her for more technical details and she didn’t respond, Egorin wrote. It is unclear why Ren didn’t respond.
Egorin 写道，任丽丽在 2019 年 12 月提供的序列从未发表，并于 2020 年 1 月 16 日从数据库中删除，此前 NIH 按照其协议要求她提供更多技术细节，但她没有回应。 目前尚不清楚任丽丽为何没有回应。
On Jan. 12, NIH received and published a SARS-CoV-2 sequence from another source.
1 月 12 日，NIH 收到并公布了来自另一个来源的武汉肺炎序列。
“The sequence published on Jan. 12, 2020, was nearly identical to the sequence that was submitted by Lili Ren,” Egorin told the committee.
“2020 年 1 月 12 日发布的序列与任丽丽提交的序列几乎相同，”叶戈林告诉委员会。
The discovery that a researcher in the state-affiliated Chinese lab had isolated and mapped the virus well before Beijing revealed publicly that it had done so shows the U.S. “cannot trust any of the so-called ‘facts’ or data provided by the CCP and calls into serious question the legitimacy of any scientific theories based on such information,” McMorris Rodgers said in a statement. The committee has spent months probing Covid’s origins, U.S. government funding of overseas research and other issues.
中国官方实验室的一名研究人员早在北京公开披露之前就已经分离并绘制了该病毒的图谱，这一发现表明美国“不能相信中共和中共提供的任何所谓‘事实’或数据。” 麦克莫里斯·罗杰斯在一份声明中说：“这对任何基于此类信息的科学理论的合法性提出了严重质疑。” 该委员会花了几个月的时间调查武汉肺炎的起源、美国政府对海外研究的资助以及其他问题。
Having the virus information two weeks earlier “would have helped in the early stages of the outbreak,” particularly with putting a more effective testing regimen in place, said Richard Ebright, a microbiologist at Rutgers University.
罗格斯大学微生物学家理查德·埃布赖特说，两周前获得病毒信息“将有助于在疫情爆发的早期阶段”，特别是制定更有效的检测方案。
Bloom, the virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, wrote on the GitHub platform that “immediate public release of the sequence could have accelerated by several weeks the development of COVID-19 vaccines that saved thousands of lives per week in the United States alone.”
Fred Hutchinson 癌症中心的病毒学家 Bloom 在 GitHub 平台上写道，“立即公开发布该序列可能会使武汉肺炎疫苗的开发速度加快几周，仅在美国每周就挽救了数千人的生命。 ”
HHS and NIH didn’t respond to requests for comment on why information about Ren’s submission wasn’t made public earlier.
美国卫生与公众服务部 (HHS) 和美国国立卫生研究院 (NIH) 没有回应关于为何没有提前公开任丽丽提交的信息的置评请求。
While the existence of an accurate Covid virus sequence in a U.S. database wasn’t previously known, Ren has written in the past about her search for Covid’s causes. In a May 2020 article in Chinese Medical Journal, a scientific publication, she and her colleagues described how samples were taken from five patients at a hospital in Wuhan, China, between Dec. 18 and Dec. 29, 2019. Sequencing, they wrote, revealed the presence of a new coronavirus “that is associated with severe and fatal respiratory disease in humans.”
尽管此前并不知道美国数据库中是否存在准确的武汉肺炎序列，但任丽丽过去曾写过她对武汉肺炎病毒病因的研究。 在科学出版物《中华医学杂志》2020 年 5 月的一篇文章中，她和她的同事描述了 2019 年 12 月 18 日至 29 日期间如何从中国武汉一家医院的 5 名患者身上采集样本。他们写道，测序， 揭示了一种新型冠状病毒的存在，“与人类严重和致命的呼吸道疾病有关”。
Ren is listed in contract documents as being a collaborator on a U.S.-funded project to study how coronaviruses can be transferred from animals to humans. The work, which included collecting bat samples in China, was overseen by the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance.
合同文件中将任列为美国资助项目的合作者，该项目旨在研究冠状病毒如何从动物转移到人类。 这项工作包括在中国收集蝙蝠样本，由非营利性生态健康联盟监督。
The Journal has previously reported that Chinese specialists met with the World Health Organization in Beijing on Jan. 3, 2020, but didn’t disclose that the new disease was caused by a coronavirus, a fact Chinese officials already knew.
《华尔街日报》此前曾报道称，中国专家于 2020 年 1 月 3 日在北京与世界卫生组织会面，但没有透露这种新疾病是由冠状病毒引起的，而中国官员已经知道这一事实。
“This [database] submission shows that in fact, at least by Dec. 28, 2019, scientists within China did know this pneumonia was being caused” by a new coronavirus, said Bloom, the virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle.
西雅图弗雷德·哈钦森癌症中心的病毒学家布鲁姆说，“这份[数据库]提交的文件表明，事实上，至少到 2019 年 12 月 28 日，中国境内的科学家确实知道这种肺炎是由一种新型冠状病毒引起的”。行啦行啦，别在这因为武汉肺炎几个字就无能狂怒了。无能狂怒里那几个自称武汉的，2020年初的时候爽吗？剩下非武汉的，2022嗓子眼捅得痛快吗？2023发财没有？
赞(95)