{"id":40013,"date":"2024-05-01T11:30:46","date_gmt":"2024-05-01T11:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/01\/chinese-scientist-who-shared-covid-sequence-protests-lab-closure\/"},"modified":"2024-05-01T11:30:46","modified_gmt":"2024-05-01T11:30:46","slug":"chinese-scientist-who-shared-covid-sequence-protests-lab-closure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/01\/chinese-scientist-who-shared-covid-sequence-protests-lab-closure\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese Scientist Who Shared Covid Sequence Protests Lab Closure"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"550\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/05\/01\/multimedia\/01CHINA-SCIENTIST-wgmf\/01CHINA-SCIENTIST-wgmf-facebookJumbo.jpg?resize=1050,550&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Chinese Scientist Who Shared Covid Sequence Protests Lab Closure\" title=\"Chinese Scientist Who Shared Covid Sequence Protests Lab Closure\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A well-known Chinese scientist who defied a Chinese government gag order by being the first to disclose the genome of the Covid virus to a global database four years ago held a rare protest this week in Shanghai after being locked out of his lab.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The scientist, Zhang Yongzhen, had run a laboratory in Shanghai since 2018, but found over the weekend that the facility had been sealed off with one of his colleagues locked inside, according to a Chinese news outlet. Dr. Zhang\u2019s key card had been canceled and the elevators had been turned off.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">On Sunday evening, he began sleeping outdoors on flattened cardboard in front of locked blue doors at the sidewalk entrance to the lab, photos posted online by students showed. At least five security guards could be seen in one of the photos.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Another news outlet, the online website of a state media agency in Shandong Province, reported on Monday about Dr. Zhang\u2019s sit-in, and quoted him as saying then that, \u201cI am still waiting for the problem to be solved, but no one has come to solve it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The accounts of Dr. Zhang\u2019s ordeal drew a public outcry on Chinese social media, with people posting thousands of comments on the report from Shandong Province media. Many of them criticized the Shanghai government and its public health center, which owns the lab, for locking the prominent scientist out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Early Wednesday morning, Dr. Zhang wrote in a post on his social media account that his team had been allowed to resume research in the lab. He thanked his students and people who had voiced support for him online, and said that discussions were underway to resolve an ongoing dispute over payment for past work and his continued employment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It was not immediately clear if Dr. Zhang\u2019s dispute with the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center is official retaliation for his role in revealing the Covid virus\u2019s genome to the world in early January 2020. At the time, the Chinese government was silencing doctors and others who sought to raise red flags about the mysterious virus that had been detected in the central city of Wuhan. Scientists were under pressure not to publish information about it without permission.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Other Chinese scientists had also sequenced the virus then, but the Chinese government banned researchers on Jan. 3, 2020, from releasing details of a new pneumonia that had begun to circulate in Wuhan. Dr. Zhang obtained the virus in lung fluid from a patient at Wuhan Central Hospital the same day, and soon uploaded its genome to a database hosted by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Days passed without the information going online, as the database administrators had a policy of reviewing new genomes before publishing them. So Dr. Zhang <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/03\/21\/health\/covid-lab-leak-eddie-holmes.html\" title=\"\">gave permission to an Australian virologist<\/a>, Edward C. Holmes, to <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/virological.org\/t\/novel-2019-coronavirus-genome\/319\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">post it on Jan. 10<\/a> to a forum for virologists, where it quickly drew international attention.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The authorities quickly closed Dr. Zhang\u2019s laboratory after he disclosed the genome of the virus, but subsequently allowed it to reopen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Shanghai government had no immediate comment on Wednesday about Dr. Zhang\u2019s access to his lab. Southern Weekend, a state-controlled Chinese news outlet, quoted an official at the Shanghai public health center as saying on Monday evening that the center\u2019s contract with Dr. Zhang had been terminated in October 2022.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">According to one description posted by a group of people who identified themselves as members of his research team, Dr. Zhang contended he and his team were still owed more than $1 million by the Shanghai public health center under a previous contract. The account also described Dr. Zhang as having objected to plans by the authorities for the laboratory and its many pathogen samples to be relocated quickly to another building with a laboratory that had not been certified to the same level of biological security.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Some accounts of his protest outside the lab had also disappeared from the internet by Wednesday morning, apparently deleted by government censors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/05\/01\/world\/asia\/china-scientist-covid-lab.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A well-known Chinese scientist who defied a Chinese government gag order by being the first to disclose the genome of the Covid virus to a global database four years ago held a rare protest this week in Shanghai after being locked out of his lab. The scientist, Zhang Yongzhen, had run a laboratory in Shanghai [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/05\/01\/multimedia\/01CHINA-SCIENTIST-wgmf\/01CHINA-SCIENTIST-wgmf-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3394,17942,2120,253,10452,1157,23656,14002],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40013"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40015,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40013\/revisions\/40015"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}