In April 2020, Rogin published a column about diplomatic cables written by US diplomats in 2018 which he claimed reported safety and staffing concerns the diplomats had expressed after three visits in late 2017 and early 2018 to the
Wuhan Institute of Virology. The cables reported that the WIV scientists claimed they did not have proper staffing and training to safely operate the Institute's
Biosafety Level 4 lab. The US diplomats also warned that the Institute was performing risky research on bat
coronaviruses in their labs. The cables were seen by some US officials to support a
hypothesis that the Wuhan Institute of Virology's research may have resulted in a
lab accident that caused the outbreak of the
COVID-19 pandemic. The publicly available diplomatic cables only mentions safety regarding concerns of limited productivity. Virologist Dr Angela Rasmussen claims Rogin misrepresented the statements concerning safety in the diplomatic cables. ==Incidents==