Amid continued US accusations that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, escaped from a Chinese biolab in Wuhan, the Chinese and Russian governments have called on the United Nations to ensure the US is following international conventions on bio-weapons.
During a UN meeting on arms control, both Russia and China noted that the US withdrew and never signed the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction (BWC). The US vigorously pursued biological and chemical weapons programs during and after the First World War. The US had developed stockpiles of six biological weapons, including anthrax, botulism, tularemia, brucellosis, Q-fever, and Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, as well as staphylococcal enterotoxin B. President Nixon ordered them destroyed between 1970-71.
There is pushback from China and Russia over US accusations that Covid-19 might have escaped from a Wuhan biolab. At the same time, the BWC treaty is little more than a gentleman’s agreement with no verification protocols. But now might be a good time for the UN to put in place a strong treaty to ban biological weapons.