More and more athletes are claiming that they contracted a Covid-19-like illness at the World Military Games, held in Wuhan in October 2019, from the 18th to the 27th.

9308 military personnel from 103 countries, including India, participated.

The first Corona case was identified on November 17th. But it was only 45 days later, on December 31, that China reported the spread of a pneumonia-like illness to the WHO’s local office.

While the US leadership has implied that a leak in October at the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Level 4 lab (only 20 kms from the venue of the Military Games) might have been the origin of the pandemic, Chinese officials have pointed instead to an admission by a top US health official that he found the virus in some deceased pneumonia patients before November 2019. The Chinese have suggested that Fort Detrick in Maryland, a top pathogen research facility, might be the culprit.