Months before the first official reports of a novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China, officials in Hubei Province placed a massive order for PCR tests, according to Nikkei, citing a report from researchers – including former intelligence officers – in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia.
Records from a website aggregating public sector procurement contracts reveal that approximately 67.4 million yuan (US$10.5 million at current rates) was spent on the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests starting in May 2019 – nearly double the 2018 total.
