Secret Chinese Biolab Discovered In California Was Experimenting With COVID, HIV, Herpes, Malaria

A central California city is reeling after a nondescript warehouse turned out to be an illegal lab with deadly pathogens, including coronavirus, HIV, and malaria.

If it were not for an errant hose sticking out of the back of the warehouse last spring, city officials would not have known that a shady biotech company with links to China had set up shop there, filling it with industrial freezers, hundreds of vials of viruses, and about 1,000 dead and dying lab mice.

Government investigators also found Covid diagnostic and pregnancy tests at the underground testing facility that they believed were being developed there, in addition to at least 20 stored infectious agents, including coronavirus, HIV, hepatitis, and herpes.

The lab was run under a company called Prestige Biotech unlicensed for business in California, whose president Xiuquin Yao said was a successor to the now-defunct company Universal Meditech Inc. However, officials dispatched to addresses linked to the companies turned up at empty office buildings or addresses in China that could not be verified.

The months-long investigation resulted in early July in the proper disposal of all dangerous chemicals and substances, labeled and unlabeled, and while officials there note that a probe into the origins of the lab is ongoing, they claim people in the surrounding area are safe.

While officials say the immediate danger has been resolved and power has been cut to the building, there will be lingering concerns about possible contamination in the area from improper waste disposal and leakage of dangerous bacteria and viruses that could pose health dangers to Reedley residents.

The black-market type lab operating in the sleepy town of Reedley, California, was brought to official attention in early March when a code enforcement officer, driving down the street noticed a garden hose sticking out of a building where it should not have been.

This lucky catch thrust into motion a combined state, local, and federal probe, one that Reedley City Manager Nicole Zieba had never seen before.

Ms Zieba said: ‘This is an unusual situation. I’ve been in government for 25 years. I’ve never seen anything like this.’

A warrant issued soon after the official happened across the code violation allowed those in the government to search the nondescript building, where they were shocked at what they found.

In one room were about 1,000 inhumanely stored white lab mice, roughly 200 of which were already dead. According to Assistant Director of the Fresno County Department of Public Health Joe Prado, the lab was conducting tests on the mice that would help develop Covid test kits found on site.

Mr Prado said: ‘They were utilizing laboratory mice to see whether or not the Covid test kits were actually testing for Covid. So that was the purpose for the laboratory mice on-site.’

Mr Prado did not add whether any of those Covid tests had been given or sold to the public.

They also found a wide array of vials containing biomaterials including blood and tissue, as well as many other unlabeled chemicals, some of which were found to contain the coronavirus, as well as bacterial and virus pathogens including HIV, chlamydia, E. Coli, streptococcus pneumonia, hepatitis B and C, herpes 1 and 5, rubella and malaria.

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