Kirstie Alley slams media, government after reports Wuhan workers fell ill with coronavirus symptoms in 2019

"Cheers" star Kirstie Alley is up in arms about the media and government after reports the United States learned that several Wuhan lab researchers fell ill with coronavirus symptoms before the COVID-19 outbreak.

A former State Department official told Fox News on Sunday that about a month before COVID-19 was first reported in Wuhan, China, foreign government contacts told State Department officials that several workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology – one of the country’s most prestigious labs – fell ill in mid-November 2019. In January 2021, the State Department disclosed that the "United States government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019." It found that they'd experienced symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 "and common seasonal illness."