Lieber's research is only superficially relevant to this subject. When you look a little deeper, you see that it is not really relevant. SARS-Cov-2 is a coronavirus, not a nano-machine.
This Chinese employee was a biostatistician, you might want to point out, not a lab worker. This story also does not have any bearing on anything else you mention.
The original source for the quote according to that article is this article:
Concerns raised in Mass. life sciences sector about US crackdown on China - The Boston Globe
Hotlzman is a
former executive of Biogen. And the reason he was approached for comment by the Boston Globe is likely revealed by the story about the Biogen employee who took antipyretic medicine before flying to China: he used to be an executive for a scientific firm in the Boston area which employs Chinese nationals. The article itself is about the chilling effect US government crackdowns are having on ties between US and Chinese researchers.
Biogen is a pharmaceutical company specializing in developing treatments for neurological diseases. I do not see how their expertise is relevant to the genetic engineering of a virus. Being based in the Boston area, it is not surprising that some of its researchers also hold academic positions at Harvard. There is no demonstrated link to Lieber.