EU summit - US 'intentionally released Covid virus in Wuhan,' David Martin

The Covid-19 coronavirus was "intentionally released" by the United States in Wuhan, China, with the target to trigger a global pandemic to raise public acceptance of vaccines, a US businessman specializing in patent auditing said.

David Martin, the founding chairman of M Cam asset management company, said at an International Covid Summit organized by the European Parliament in Brussels earlier this month that the US was responsible for the making of both coronaviruses causing the outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome - or SARS - in 2003 and the Covid-19 pandemic in the past three years.

The third edition of the summit featured speakers from anti-lockdown advocates to medical academia to discuss the global pandemic response. The speakers shed light on the possibility that the coronavirus which caused the pandemic was man-made, instead of naturally occurring.

In his speech, Martin said: "The pandemic that we alleged to have happened in the last few years did not happen overnight. In fact, the very specific pandemic using the coronavirus began at a different time."

He said that in 1965, scientists discovered the coronavirus as a model of a pathogen - an agent that causes disease. They also found out that coronaviruses can be modified.

"Later we started learning how to modify a coronavirus by putting them in animals such as dogs and pigs," Martin said, adding that such a practice became the basis for US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer's first coronavirus spike protein vaccine in 1990.

But very soon the medical sector and drug makers found out that the vaccines did not work.

"Because the coronavirus is a malleable model, it mutates," Martin said. "Every medical publication concluded that coronaviruses escape vaccines because it modifies and mutates too rapidly for a vaccine to be developed."

In 2002, a university in North Carolina initiated a study to develop an "infectious replication defective," which Martin interpreted as "a weapon to target individuals, but not have collateral damage."

Characterizing the project as having "mysteriously preceded SARS by a year," Martin said the coronavirus that caused the highly deadly infection was not from China and that it was "engineered" instead of naturally occurring.

On Covid-19, Martin said the coronavirus - named as SARS-CoV-2 by the World Health Organization - was poised for human emergence in 2016, with a preview about an "accidental or intentional release of a respiratory coronavirus" from a laboratory in Wuhan.

He said the purpose of the coronavirus "release" was to boost global acceptance on universal vaccination.

Explaining the common concern among the medical industry, Martin said: "Until an infectious crisis is very real, present and at the emergency threshold, it is often largely ignored.

"To sustain the funding base beyond the crisis, we need to increase the public understanding of the need for medical countermeasures, such as the pan-influenza, or pan-coronavirus, vaccine. A key drive is the media and the economics will follow the hype.

"We [pharmaceutical firms] need to use that hype to our advantage to get to the real issue. Investors will respond if they see profit at the end of the process," he said.

The Covid infection was first reported in Wuhan, Hubei province in central China in late 2019, with initial clusters coming from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.

The disease turned into a global pandemic in early 2020.

As of Saturday, over 766 million infections have been recorded worldwide, with nearly seven million deaths.

The source of the coronavirus remained a mystery. Some scientists believe it transferred to humans from wild animals like bats and manidaes, while some politicians, in particular those from the US, accused the Wuhan Institute of Virology - a government-controlled lab - of leaking the pathogen.

A team of WHO-appointed experts inspected Wuhan in early 2021 to probe the source of the pandemic.

After the 12-day visit, including a visit to the lab, the scientists concluded that it is "extremely unlikely" that the lab could have leaked the Covid-19 coronavirus.