China and Pakistan undertook a secret three-year deal to expand potential bio-warfare capabilities, the Klaxon reported.
According to Anthony Klan, the Klaxon report author, the covert deal is signed between China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology and Pakistan military’s Defense Science and Technology Organization (DESTO), to join forces to research in “emerging infectious diseases” and advance studies on the biological control of transmitted diseases.
It is important to know that the Wuhan Institute of Virology is under speculation of being the lab where COVID-19 had emerged from.
The China- Pakistan covert deal includes several research projects related to the deadly agent anthrax, an infection caused by the bacterium Bacillus Anthracis. Anthrax can occur in four forms: skin, lungs, intestinal, and injection. The bacterium infection has killed hundreds of thousands of people and animals each year, until the 20th century.
Till now, the “covert China-Pakistan project has conducted ‘successful soil sampling tests’ to isolate Bacillus Thuringiensis (BT), which has a “striking similarity” to Bacillus Anthracis – or anthrax,” The Klaxon report stated.
“Considering the striking similarity between BT and Bacillus Anthracis, a classified bio-warfare agent, (Pakistan’s) improved know-how in handling the bacteria could enrich a potential offensive biological program,” a source said.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology Lab has given Pakistan the reagents for Bacillus Thuringiensis. The lab has also supplied “extensive training on the manipulation of pathogens and bio-informatics” to Pakistani scientists “to help Pakistan develop its own virus collection database”, said The Klaxon report.
According to The Klaxon report’s intelligence source, the reagents for Bacillus Thuringiensis could help Pakistan “enhance its capability of genetic identification of viruses, access to dangerous microorganisms, and use of genomic tools for research and infectious diseases.”
The secret covert China-Pakistan project was “detached from the supervision of civilian universities or government health departments in Pakistan”, The Klaxon report said.
Intelligence sources cited by The Klaxon expressed grave concerns regarding the covert deal which allows China to test biological agents outside its borders to curtail the “risk of drawing condemnation from the international community”.
A security expert told The Klaxon that China’s participation in the covert deal with Pakistan is being contemplated by India and western intelligence agencies as being “driven chiefly by its agenda to engage Pakistan against India”.
According to The Klaxon’s sources China-Pakistan, biological covert deal had already conducted experiments on the Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever Virus (CCHFV), alike the Ebola virus, a rapid-onset fever virus that causes death in about 25% of cases.
The Klaxon report alleges Pakistan of undertaking tests on CCHFV in labs that underequipped to handle Bio-Safety Level-4 diseases.
Over the recent years, there is a heightened threat of biological weapons as experts claim that China is notably invested in DNA research that has the potential of leading to the development of a biological weapon that could target, or be ineffective against, people of specific DNAs. This could lead to biological warfare or bioterrorism.