WIV held the nine closest relatives of SARS-CoV-2

The WIV announced it already possessed a close relative of the new virus (RaTG13, whose name they had changed), traced to a mineshaft in Yunnan where pneumonia killed three miners in 2012, and brought back eight other very closely related viruses, so the nine closest relatives of the pandemic virus had been collected over 1,000 miles away by Wuhan scientists and brought to Wuhan.