In July 2019, a rare event occurred in Canada, whereby a group of Chinese virologists were forcibly dispatched from the Canadian National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg, a facility they worked in, running parts of the Special Pathogen Programme of Canada's Public Health Agency.1 Experimental infections – including aerogenic ones – of monkeys with the most lethal viruses found on Planet Earth comprise nearly a routine therein. Four months earlier, a shipment of two exceptionally virulent viruses dealt with in the NML – Ebola and Nipah viruses – was on its way from NML, ended in China, and has thereafter been traced and regarded to be improper, specifically put as "possible policy breaches", or rather but an "administrative issue", ostensibly.

Married to a Chinese scientist – Dr. Keding Cheng, also affiliated with the NML (specifically the "Science and Technology Core"), and primarily a bacteriologist who shifted to virology – Dr. Qiu frequently visited and maintained tight bonds with China, generally speaking.

Notably, Dr. Qiu made at least five trips over the school year 2017-18 to the above mentioned Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences,17 which was certified for BSL4 in January 2017. Moreover, in August 2017, the National Health Commission of China approved research activities involving Ebola, Nipah, and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever viruses at the Wuhan facility, and in March 2019, the Chinese published their tour de force.