Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said that reports of the Wall Street Journal about a serious illness in November 2019 of three employees of the Wuhan Institute of Virology are misinformation, RIA Novosti reports.

According to him, the Wuhan Institute of Virology issued a statement on March 23, 2021, stating that the institution had not encountered a new coronavirus infection until December 30, 2019. Lijian also noted that, according to the statement, as of March 23, 2021, not a single employee of the institute had contracted a coronavirus infection.

Earlier, the WSJ reported that three employees of the Wuhan Institute of Virology became seriously ill in November 2019, before the first reports of a new type of coronavirus appeared.