There was blood and other bodily fluids in Gatorade bottles labeled in Mandarin, samples of at least 20 potentially infectious agents including malaria, dengue fever, and COVID-19 — and a pungent odor from what turned out to be nearly 1,000 mice.

    • LordOfTheChia@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      It definitely is. They go out of their way to avoid mentioning that they discovered they were making testing kits for various infectious diseases (which explains why you’d want samples of said diseases).

      This information was in the original report that broke the story and the in the charging report:

      https://www.justice.gov/usao-edca/pr/arrest-made-central-california-bio-lab-investigation

      According to court documents, between December 2020 and March 2023, Zhu and others manufactured, imported, sold, and distributed hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 test kits, in addition to test kits for HIV, pregnancy, clinical urinalysis, and other conditions in the United States and China.

      As I mentioned in a comment below, the word “test” appears nowhere in the “Scripps News” report.