Scientists: EVALI Cases May Have Been Covid

Some victims of the vaping-related lung disease that swept the U.S. in 2019 were in fact suffering from Covid-19, reports the Global Times, a tabloid newspaper associated with the Chinese communist party.

After reviewing some 250 chest CT scans from published papers, a group of Chinese scientists and radiologists suspect that some patients were wrongly diagnosed with e-cigarette or vaping use-associated lung injury (EVALI). According to the Global Times, the scientists found that 16 EVALI patients suffered from viral infections, which indicates that they could have had Covid-19.

Yang Zhanqiu, a virologist at Wuhan University, said that due to the similarity of symptoms between EVALI and Covid-19 patients and since no nucleic acid detection kits were available at the time, it’s highly likely that some Covid-19 patients were misdiagnosed as EVALI patients in 2019.

The scientists are now urging U.S. officials to start screening for Covid-19 in patients who in 2019 were diagnosed with EVALI.

Covid is generally believed to have originated in Wuhan, but the Chinese communist party has on several occasions suggested that Covid-19 originated outside of China.