A prominent Chinese scientist who was the first to reveal the genome of the coronavirus to a global database four years ago, despite a gag order from the Chinese government, was locked out of his laboratory and staged rare protests in Shanghai this week. .
The scientist, Zhang Yongzhen, had been running a laboratory in Shanghai since 2018 but discovered over the weekend that the facility had been cordoned off and one of his colleagues was locked inside, Chinese news media reported. Dr. Zhang’s key card has been canceled and the elevator has been closed.
Photos posted online by students show that he began sleeping on a flat piece of cardboard in front of a locked blue door at the lab’s sidewalk entrance on Sunday night. At least five security guards can be seen in one of the photos.
Another news outlet, the online site of a state media outlet in Shandong Province, reported on Monday the sit-in by Dr. Zhang, quoting him as saying at the time: “I’m still waiting for the problem to be solved, but no one has come to solve the problem.”
Dr. Zhang’s ordeal sparked a public outcry on Chinese social media, with thousands of comments posted on the Shandong province media report. Many of them criticized the Shanghai government and its public health center, which owns the laboratory, for shutting out the famous scientist.
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, Dr. Zhang posted on his social media account that his team had been allowed to resume research in the laboratory. He thanked his students and those who expressed support for him online and said discussions were underway to resolve the ongoing dispute over compensation for his past work and his continued employment.
It is unclear whether Dr. Zhang’s dispute with the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center is official retaliation for his disclosure of the coronavirus genome to the world in early January 2020. At the time, the Chinese government was silencing doctors and others involved. An attempt was made to raise a red flag about the mysterious virus discovered in the central city of Wuhan. Scientists are under pressure not to release relevant information without permission.
Other Chinese scientists also sequenced the virus at the time, but the Chinese government banned researchers on January 3, 2020, from publishing details of the new pneumonia that had begun spreading in Wuhan. Dr. Zhang obtained the virus from the lung fluid of a patient at Wuhan Central Hospital that day and quickly uploaded its genome to a database hosted by the National Institutes of Health.
Days passed and the information was still not online, as database administrators have a policy of reviewing new genomes before publishing them.So Dr. Zhang License granted to Australian virologistsEdward C. Holmes, to Published on January 10 to a forum of virologists, and it quickly attracted international attention.
After Dr. Zhang disclosed the viral genome, authorities quickly shut down his laboratory but later allowed it to reopen.
The Shanghai government had no immediate comment on Wednesday about Dr. Zhang’s access to its laboratory. China’s state-run news outlet Southern Weekend quoted an official from the Shanghai Public Health Center on Monday evening as saying that the center’s contract with Dr. Zhang had been terminated in October 2022.
According to an account posted by a group of people claiming to be members of his research team, Dr. Zhang claimed that the Shanghai Public Health Center still owed him and his team more than $1 million under a previous contract. The report also said that Dr. Zhang opposed authorities’ plans to quickly move the laboratory and its many pathogen samples to another building where the laboratory has not yet been certified to the same biosafety level.
As of Wednesday morning, some reports of him protesting outside the lab had also disappeared from the internet, apparently deleted by government censors.
