Mysterious Chinese COVID Lab Uncovered in City of Reedley CA

Code enforcement check uncovers illegal lab making COVID-19 and pregnancy test kits, bacterial and viral agents and 900 white mice

Why would a COVID lab run by a shady Chinese company be operating in Reedley, CA in the central San Joaquin Valley? The lab, which was supposed to be an empty building, was discovered by Reedley city code enforcement officers when they saw a garden hose attached to the building and investigated.

Darren Fraser at the MidValley Times reported earlier this week that the building has been illegally operated since October 2022 by Wang Zhaolin of Prestige Biotech, and the lab was used to produce COVID-19 tests and pregnancy tests.

City of Reedley officials called in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the FBI, the State Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), the State Department of Health, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) and the Fresno County Department of Public Health (FCDPH).

“Reedley officials and personnel from CDPH and FCDPH executed a warrant on March 16 to inspect the warehouse at 850 I Street,” MidValley Times reported. “According to a declaration from Humero Prado, Assistant Director of Fresno County Public Health, which was filed in superior court, investigators discovered that one room of the warehouse was used to produce COVID-19 and pregnancy tests. In other rooms, investigators found blood, tissue and other bodily fluid samples. They also found thousands of vials that contained unlabeled fluids.”

And they found 900 genetically engineered mice, engineered to catch and carry COVID-19, living in “inhumane” conditions. 773 of the mice had to be euthanized, and officials found another 178 mice already dead.

We have a few questions:

Why was a Chinese company making COVID-19 tests in California?

Where were these tests to be used? California public health agencies? Medical groups and hospitals?

Is the California Department of Public Health involved?

Who authorized this lab?

What does the Newsom administration know about this?

Mid Valley Times further reports:

“From May 2 through May 4, the CDC’s Division of Select Agents and Toxins inspected 850 I Street. Court documents confirm the CDC found potentially infectious agents at the location. These included both bacterial and viral agents, including: chlamydia, E. Coli, streptococcus pneumonia, hepatitis B and C, herpes 1 and 5 and rubella. The CDC also found samples of malaria.”

“Court documents identify Xiuquin Yao as the alleged president of Prestige. Neither Reedley nor FCDPH was able to obtain from Yao any substantive information regarding Prestige or why infectious agents and mice were being stored at 850 I Street other than to say that the company was developing diagnostic testing kits.”

“Court documents include copies of an email exchange Prado conducted with David He, who identified himself as a representative of Prestige, beginning May 31 and continuing through June 13. Over the course of numerous emails, Prado repeatedly asks He to provide documentation regarding licensed medical waste disposal, Prestige’s reasons for storing infectious agents and how the company will respond to the biological abatement orders handed down by FCDPH.”

“They (Prestige) completely avoided the questions,” Prado said. “This individual (He) was either unaware or was intentionally trying to mislead us.”

As a start, the Globe made Public records requests to the City of Reedly and the Fresno County Department of Public Health for information and communications between the all of the agencies, as well as any documents and materials found at the illegal lab location. Read the entire article at MidValleyTimes.com.

As we reported in February 2021 about the thousands of inconclusive test results coming out of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s $100 million COVID-19 testing lab with the $1.7 billion contract with PerkinElmer, “Is anything about the COVID-19 virus true, or is this the biggest political manipulation this country has ever seen?” source

CDC detects coronavirus, HIV, hepatitis and herpes at unlicensed California lab

The CDC found at least 20 potentially infectious agents at the warehouse in Fresno County.

Local and federal authorities spent months investigating a warehouse in Fresno County, California, that they suspect was home to an illegal, unlicensed laboratory full of lab mice, medical waste and hazardous materials.

The Fresno County Public Health Department has been “evaluating and assessing the activities of an unlicensed laboratory” in Reedley, the health department’s assistant director, Joe Prado, said in a statement Thursday. All of the biological agents were destroyed by July 7 following a legal abatement process by the agency.

“The evaluation required coordination and collaboration with multiple federal and state agencies to determine and classify biological and chemical contents onsite, in addition to assessing jurisdictional authority under this unique situation,” Prado said.

According to court documents, city officials inspected the location at 850 I St. on March 3 for building violations and found various chemicals being stored. On March 16, an inspection by county public health officials allegedly turned up medical devices thought to have been developed on-site, such as Covid and pregnancy tests.

“Certain rooms of the warehouse were found to contain several vessels of liquid and various apparatus,” court documents said. “Fresno County Public Health staff also observed blood, tissue and other bodily fluid samples and serums; and thousands of vials of unlabeled fluids and suspected biological material.”

Hundreds of mice at the warehouse were kept in inhumane conditions, court documents said. The city took possession of the animals in April, euthanizing 773 of them; more than 175 were found dead.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tested the substances and detected at least 20 potentially infectious agents, including coronavirus, HIV, hepatitis and herpes, according to a Health and Human Services letter dated June 6.

An investigation found the tenant was Prestige BioTech, a company registered in Nevada and unlicensed for business in California. City officials spoke with Xiuquin Yao, who was identified as the company president, through emails included in the court documents.

Yao told officials that Prestige BioTech moved assets belonging to a defunct company, Universal Meditech Inc., to the Reedley warehouse from Fresno after UMI went under. Prestige Biotech was a creditor to UMI and identified as its successor, according to court documents.

Officials were unable to get any California-based address for either company except for the previous Fresno location from which UMI had been evicted.

“The other addresses provided for identified authorized agents were either empty offices or addresses in China that could not be verified,” court documents said.

Prestige BioTech is accused of failing to comply with orders, including providing a plan for biological abatement and disposal of the materials. Emails sent to Yao and Prestige BioTech requesting comment were not immediately answered Thursday.

Prado told NBC affiliate KSEE of Fresno that those associated with Prestige BioTech were not forthcoming with information. Court documents say they failed to provide any licensing or permit that allows experimentation or other laboratory activity.

Reedley City Manager Nicole Zieba told KSEE that officials have cleared the area of hazardous materials but are still working to empty the warehouse.

“Some of our federal partners still have active investigations going. I can only speak to the building side of it,” Zieba said. source

Illegal medical lab containing bioengineered mice and infectious agents including HIV and herpes discovered in California

The makeshift lab contained roughly 30 refrigerators and freezers — some of which were non-operational — as well as incubators, medical testing supplies, and hundreds of mice. Several disease samples tested from the lab included infectious agents like herpes, coronavirus, E. Coli, and malaria, SFist reported.

Wang Zhaolin, a representative of the company operating the lab, Prestige Biotech, told investigators that the mice inside the warehouse had been genetically engineered to catch and spread the COVID-19 virus, according to The San Joaquin Valley Sun.

The warehouse came under investigation in March after a local code enforcement officer discovered a garden hose attached to a back wall of the building. As officials searched, medical devices that appeared to have been created on-site, such as COVID-19 and pregnancy tests, were also discovered, NBC News reported.

“Certain rooms of the warehouse were found to contain several vessels of liquid and various apparatus,” NBC reported court documents related to the incident said. “Fresno County Public Health staff also observed blood, tissue and other bodily fluid samples and serums; and thousands of vials of unlabeled fluids and suspected biological material.”

Nearly 800 of the mice found inside the warehouse were euthanized by officials, per NBC. An additional approximately 175 mice were already dead when they were discovered.

“There was over 800 different chemicals on site in different bottles of different acids,” KRON4 reported the assistant director of the Fresno County Department of Public Health, Joe Prado, said. “Unfortunately, a lot of these are being categorized under unknown chemicals.”

All of the biohazard material within the lab has been destroyed as of July 7, NBC reported, though an investigation into the lab’s origins and activity remains ongoing.

The CDC and Fresno County Department of Public Health did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment. source

A protein that may hinder the brain’s regrowth after damage points researchers to an unexpected treatment

Stroke treatment has been a race against time. In the hours after a stroke, the clot-busting treatment tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) can limit damage to the brain. But once that damage is done, no drugs are known to promote recovery. New research suggests such a therapy could come from an unlikely target: a cellular protein called CCR5 that allows HIV to infect cells. Scientists found that in mice, disabling CCR5 helps surviving neurons make new connections, and that people who carry a CCR5 mutation may recover better from a stroke.

“This is the first real molecular target to improve recovery after stroke,” says Argye Hillis, a stroke neurologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, who was not involved in the work. A clinical trial will soon test its promise by giving stroke patients an HIV drug that blocks CCR5.

White blood cells display CCR5 on their surface to intercept signals from molecules called chemokines and coordinate an immune response. But HIV exploits CCR5, grabbing onto it to invade host cells. People with a mutation that cripples the CCR5 gene are protected from infection, which is why Chinese scientist He Jiankui recently aimed to mutate CCR5 in controversial human experiments.

The new discoveries about CCR5 began with a hunt for “smart mice”—animals bearing genetic mutations that apparently boost their ability to learn and remember. Neuroscientist Alcino Silva and his team at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), wanted to figure out which of 148 mouse strains had such enhancements. In 2016, they reported that reducing levels of CCR5 in a healthy mouse brain enhanced memory formation and learning.

UCLA stroke neurologist Thomas Carmichael was intrigued. “When you watch patients recover in stroke, it looks like they’re relearning to walk or relearning language,” he says. Indeed, surviving neurons near the injury sprout tendrils to make new contacts across the brain. A drug that targets CCR5 seemed promising for stroke recovery, and that drug was already on hand. Maraviroc, which blocks CCR5, was approved by U.S. regulators in 2007 for use with other antiretroviral drugs to treat HIV infections.

In Cell this week, Silva, Carmichael, and their collaborators showed that CCR5 levels in mouse neurons skyrocket after stroke and can remain elevated for weeks—and that the protein appears to hamper recovery. The team blocked CCR5 with maraviroc or a gene that interferes with its production, and then ran the mice through tests of motor ability—for example, counting how many times their feet slipped as they walked across a metal grid. Treated mice showed greater motor improvements than controls at the end of the 9-week testing period.

Even if the researchers waited until 3 weeks after a stroke to give the animals maraviroc, it improved their performance. In previous studies, nothing has seemed to help at that point, says Dale Corbett, a neuroscientist specializing in stroke recovery at the University of Ottawa. The new results, he says, suggest “it may be feasible to reopen this recovery window in people.”

Blocking CCR5 seemed to help maintain connections between neurons adjacent to the injured site. And it caused neurons in motor regions to sprout more projections to the opposite side of the brain, a process that might help a mouse relearn lost movements.

What CCR5 does in the poststroke brain is hazy. Surging CCR5 is part of the inflammatory response to stroke, says Robyn Klein, a neuroimmunologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. In flammatory molecules may prompt neurons to express more of this chemokine receptor. In the developing brain, chemokines are known to influence how neurons migrate and connect. After stroke, they seem to decrease the number of connection sites on neurons near the damage. (How that process hinders regrowth and recovery isn’t clear.)

Carmichael notes that blocking CCR5 also caused neurons to express genes that increase their excitability, making them fire more readily. He suspects that neurons boost CCR5 after a stroke to dampen their activity and lie low to avoid a deadly cellular frenzy known as excitotoxicity. But because the protein then sticks around, that protective mechanism gets in the way of recovery.

Mouse results often prove meaningless in people, but when Carmichael’s group teamed up with researchers behind the Tel Aviv Brain Acute Stroke Cohort (TABASCO) in Israel, they found encouraging clues. Roughly 10% of Europeans have a genetic deletion that cripples CCR5, and the number is higher in Jewish people of Eastern European origin. The TABASCO team identified 68 people in its cohort of stroke survivors who had at least one copy of the CCR5 mutation. Compared with people without the mutation, they performed slightly better on tests of motor and sensory skills and cognitive abilities both 6 months and 1 year after a stroke, the new study found.

“It wasn’t gangbusters better, but … the fact that they found anything is impressive,” says Steven Cramer, a stroke neurologist at UC Irvine, who has studied genes linked to stroke recovery.

Carmichael and his collaborators are now designing a clinical trial that will give 30 people maraviroc starting when they leave an inpatient rehabilitation facility—typically about 4 weeks after a stroke. The team hopes to launch the trial this year.

Meanwhile, some researchers expect the CCR5 story to inspire a broader search for brain repair strategies based on learning and memory genes. “We’ve always been talking about having a tPA-like moment for stroke recovery,” Corbett says. “Whether this is it or not, I don’t know, but at least it gives us hope.”

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