Tag: Wuhan

Study finds 18 new zoonotic viruses in China’s wet markets, warns of ‘high risk to humans’

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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A group of scientists has found 18 new zoonotic viruses in the wet markets across China, These viruses may pose considerable risk to humans and domesticated animals. The startling discovery was made by a team of researchers from China, the US, Belgium and Australia. The study is currently in preprint server biorxiv and has not been peer reviewed.

Zoonotic viruses infect animals but have the capability to ‘jump’ and infect humans, creating new epidemic and pandemic diseases in the process.

Also read: Zoonotic diseases need to be curbed to prevent outbreaks like COVID-19: United Nations

The wet market connection 

The Wuhan Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan City was quickly claimed to be the ground zero of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the first set of cases were reported from the sprawling 50,000-square metre market. While scientific studies have turned out to be divided and inconclusive on whether the wet market was the origin of the SARS CoV-2 virus, where it jumped from an animal of indeterminate species to humans, the market was certainly one of the first superspreader events.

Despite theories of a lab leak, a bioweapon, a global hoax fuelled by the elite, and other conspiracy theories, the Wuhan Market zoonosis origin remains inconclusive.

A wet market (also called a public market or a traditional market) is one where fresh meat, fish and produce are sold. The Huanan Seafood market, in particular, was one where live animals were also kept and slaughtered fresh for customers.

Also read: WHO to revive inquiry into COVID-19 origins; what we know so far

Wet markets are common across China, India, and other parts of South and Southeast Asia. Wet markets become particularly dangerous when they engage in the trade of wild or exotic animals, thought to be the cause of zoonotic diseases like COVID-19, H5N1 avian flu, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and monkeypox.

What did the researchers find?

The researchers analysed 16 species, spread across five different mammalian orders that were found in the wet markets. Many of the species were banned by the Chinese government for trading or artificial breeding, a move brought upon by the risk of further zoonotic spread through exotic species. A total of 1,725 samples were analysed by the researchers.

“From this we identified 71 mammalian viruses, with 45 described for the first time. Eighteen viruses were considered as potentially high-risk to humans and domestic animals,” said corresponding author Shuo Su from the College of Veterinary Medicine at Nanjing Agricultural University in China.

Despite this, the researchers were unable to find any close coronavirus relations to SARS CoV, the virus responsible for causing SARS, or SARS CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19. Coronaviruses are a large group of viruses from the subfamily Orthocoronavirinae, in the family Coronaviridae, named for their crown-shaped spike protein.

Also read: How virus detectives trace the origins of an outbreak and why it’s so tricky

Out of the species examined, civets (Paguma larvata) were found to have the most number of potential zoonotic viruses. This included a bat-borne coronavirus HKU8 in the civets and the avian influenza virus H9N2. Other cases of cross-species infections included jumps of coronavirus from bats to hedgehogs and from birds to porcupines.

“These data highlight the importance of game animals as potential drivers of disease emergence,” the researchers said.

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China accuses US of politicizing COVID-19 origins research

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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China went on the offensive Wednesday ahead of the release of a US intelligence report on the origins of the coronavirus, bringing out a senior official to accuse the United States of politicizing the issue by seeking to blame China.

Fu Cong, a Foreign Ministry director-general, said at a briefing for foreign journalists that scapegoating China cannot whitewash the US. If they want to baselessly accuse China, they better be prepared to accept the counterattack from China, he said.

China, the US, and the World Health Organization are entangled in a feud that centers on whether the virus that causes COVID-19 could have leaked from a lab in the city of Wuhan, where the disease was first detected in late 2019.

A joint WHO-China report earlier this year concluded that a lab leak was extremely unlikely, and China wants the investigation to move on to other possibilities. The most likely scenario, the report said, is that the virus jumped from bats to another animal that then infected humans.

But the findings are not conclusive, and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in late March that all hypotheses are on the table and warrant complete and further studies.

US President Joe Biden ordered a 90-day review by intelligence agencies of both theories. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that an unclassified version of the report was expected to be released within several days.

China has responded to continuing speculation about a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology by suggesting the virus could have escaped from Fort Detrick, a US military lab in Maryland.

Fu, who heads the Foreign Ministry’s Arms Control Department, denied that China is engaging in a disinformation campaign.

He said that if other parties insist on pursuing the lab leak theory, then the WHO team of researchers should visit Fort Detrick. He portrayed it as a fairness issue, since the WHO has been to the Wuhan institute twice.

If Dr. Tedros believes that we should not rule out the hypothesis of a lab leak, well, he knows where to go, Fu said. He needs to go to the U.S. labs.

China notes that the Fort Detricks infectious disease institute has studied coronaviruses and that it was closed for several months in 2019-20 for safety violations.

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COVID-19 lab leak theory highly unlikely, say scientists

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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It is more probable that COVID-19 spread when an infected animal passed the SARS-CoV-2 virus to a human at a live animal market in Wuhan, China rather than the disease originating from a laboratory accident, according to a team of global scientists.

In a critical review published as pre-proof in the journal Cell, 21 scientific experts from across the world presented evidence about what may have started the pandemic.

“The discussion over the origins of the pandemic have become politicised and heated, and we felt the time was right to take a critical look at all of the available evidence,” said Stephen Goldstein, an author on the paper and evolutionary virologist at University of Utah Health, US.

“Preventing future pandemics requires the political will to cut off the routes by which these viruses enter the human population. Focusing in the wrong direction will preclude those efforts from occurring,” Goldstein said.

The authors noted that maps pinpointing geographic locations of the first wave of COVID-19 cases in December 2019, show they initially emerged close to the site of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, as well as other markets reported to have live animal trading.

They said that in the weeks following, cases radiated outward geographically, adding those cases were followed by excessive deaths in January 2020, a second marker of how the virus spread through the population.

Similarly, those deaths were initially localised to near the animal markets, the authors noted. “It tells us where the epidemic began and where intense transmission began,” Goldstein explained.

“This suggests that the epidemic began in markets in this district: the Huanan and possibly other markets as well,” he said.

Also Read: India doesn’t have sufficient data to decide on Covid-19 booster dose, say experts

The Wuhan Institute of Virology, often cited as the source of a lab leak, is also marked on the map, but is a distance away from the live animal markets. The scientists said none of the very first documented cases — or excessive deaths within the first week of emerging — were located near the institute.

None of the first documented cases were reported as being related to staff at the laboratory, they added. There is no evidence that researchers at the institute worked with SARS-CoV-2 nor a closely related virus, according to the paper.

The authors, including Edward Holmes from The University of Sydney, Australia, and Andrew Rambaut from the University of Edinburgh, UK, argue that COVID-19 is not the first coronavirus-based infectious disease associated with animal markets.

The 2002 and 2003 outbreaks of SARS, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV virus, were associated with markets in China that sold live animals, they noted. In addition to SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, five other coronaviruses have crossed into humans from animals in the past 20 years.

Also Read: COVID 3rd wave: No scientific evidence that children will be affected disproportionately, says Dr Chandrakant Lahariya

Combined with the observation that the majority of viruses in humans, both coronaviruses and other virus types, came from infected animals, the authors noted it would not be unexpected for SARS-CoV-2 to have entered the human population in the same way. A recurring argument for the lab leak theory is that the virus, SARS-CoV-2, carries a specific short genetic code that is sometimes engineered into laboratory products, called a furin cleavage site.

To investigate, researchers have previously analysed genetic sequences from multiple coronaviruses and found the code in question to be commonplace among them.

The authors further determined that the specific code in SARS-CoV-2 is imperfect and therefore would not perform its function well. “There is no logical reason why an engineered virus would utilise such a suboptimal furin cleavage site, which would entail such an unusual and needlessly complex feat of genetic engineering,” the authors wrote. Examination of the virus’ sequence has not turned up other potential signs of deliberate manipulation, they added.

While a substantial body of scientific evidence supports SARS-CoV-2 originating from wildlife, those animals have not been found, the researchers noted. “We can’t rule out the possibility of a lab accident. It can’t be dismissed entirely, but it is highly unlikely. There’s no evidence for it right now,” Goldstein added.

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China’s Wuhan, several cities begin mass testing, impose lockdowns amidst COVID-19 resurgence

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Authorities in central China’s Wuhan, where the coronavirus first emerged in 2019 and spiralled into a pandemic, on Tuesday began testing of its over 11 million people following the resurgence of cases, a year after it contained the deadly virus, even as a sense of unease prevailed in the country as several provinces reported fresh infections. Wuhan, which became famous all over the world for its first coronavirus lockdown early last year, broke the zero-infection record since June 2020, as seven new COVID-19 cases were reported.

Authorities began citywide COVID-19 testing on Tuesday, the official media here reported. The city has upgraded its epidemic response measures in the face of the recent coronavirus infections, locking down the area where COVID-19 infections have been reported while upgrading its risk levels, state-run Global Times reported.

The city metro has adopted stricter anti-epidemic rules, and all schools have been closed. Just as Wuhan braced for the second COVID-19 resurgence, especially the Delta variant, several provinces and cities including Beijing are rushing to test millions of people.

The National Health Commission (NHC), in its daily report on Tuesday, said that 61 new locally-transmitted COVID-19 cases have been reported from different provinces, including Jiangsu, Hunan, Hubei, Henan, Yunnan besides Beijing, Shanghai and Fujian. This is in addition to a host of imported cases of Chinese nationals returning home from different countries.

The municipal authorities of Zhangjiajie, a tourist destination in China’s south Hunan province where the new clusters of cases were reported and spread to 15 Chinese provinces, banned people from leaving the city. China has so far reported 93,193 COVID-19 cases, including 1,157 patients still receiving treatment, and 4,636 deaths.

The new infections raised concern over the Chinese vaccines, especially against the Delta variant, as China has administered 1.60 billion doses of the locally-made vaccines so far. China’s top epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan claimed that the Chinese vaccines were effective against the Delta variant.

The Chinese COVID-19 vaccines can protect people against the Delta variant, Zhong said, referencing studies of some 100 patients who were infected with the variant in southern Guangzhou city in May. The preliminary studies found that the Chinese vaccines are 100 percent protective against severe cases, and 76.9 percent, 67.2 percent and 63.2 percent against moderate cases, mild cases and asymptomatic infections respectively, Global Times quoted him as saying.

Zhong said that to achieve herd immunity through vaccination, China — which has a population of nearly 1.4 billion — needs to inoculate 83.3 percent of its population. Meanwhile, reports from Wuhan said that people were getting ready for the second COVID-19 outbreak.

A Wuhan resident surnamed Xiao told the Global Times that her residential community has set up a site for nucleic acid tests. A resident of Zhuankou neighbourhood, who was the first to test positive in the latest spike, transmitted the virus to six other close contacts, prompting the officials to declare a lockdown.

Another seven communities near the infected patient’s workplace, a construction site in Wuhan’s Jingkai district, have also been put under closed-off management. All residents living within the communities will receive nucleic acid testing, the local health commission said. All schools and tutorial institutions have been asked to suspend offline classes and strengthen campus health monitoring, speeding up the vaccination for teachers and students, the report said.

“Wuhan people are always on high alert of such things. The subways in Wuhan are all empty now as if people have disappeared suddenly,” a local resident said. The city’s metro has reinforced stricter COVID-19 rules, making it mandatory to wear masks, measuring body temperature and checking health codes. Several stations near the Zhuankou neighbourhood are temporarily closed.

Some of my neighbours have been piling up food since last night, but I haven’t,” another resident said. Major supermarkets in the city are now stockpiling their shelves to ensure there is full supply and prices are kept stable, the report said.

“Some would laugh and think that Wuhan people are overreacting, hiding away immediately after the epidemic strikes,” Dong, a local resident, said. “But Wuhan shouldn’t bear such scolding. We are the ones that were once the most desperate, and the deep wounds have left us with a scar,” he added.

According to the John Hopkins coronavirus tracker, the contagion has so far infected over 199,002,824 people and killed 4,237,665 globally.

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China disease expert says COVID-19 origins probe should shift to US: Report

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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A senior Chinese expert said the United States should be the priority in the next phase of investigations into the origin of COVID-19 after a study showed the disease could have been circulating there as early as December 2019, state media said on Thursday.

The study, published this week by the US National Institutes for Health (NIH), showed that at least seven people in five different US states were infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, weeks before the first official cases were reported.

Zeng Guang, chief epidemiologist with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told state-owned tabloid the Global Times that attention should now shift to the United States, which was slow to test people in the early stages of the outbreak, and is also the home of many biological laboratories.

”All bio-weapons related subjects that the country has should be subject to scrutiny,” he was quoted as saying.

Commenting on the study on Wednesday, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said it was now ”obvious” that the COVID-19 outbreak had ”multiple origins” and that other countries should cooperate with the World Health Organization (WHO).

The origin of the pandemic has become a source of political tension between China and the United States, with much of the focus on the Wuhan Institute of Virology, located in the city where the outbreak was first identified in late 2019.

A report by a US government national laboratory concluded that it was plausible that the virus had leaked from the Wuhan lab, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month.

A previous study has raised the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 could have been circulating in Europe as early as September, but experts said this didn’t necessarily mean it did not originate in China, where many SARS-like coronaviruses have been found in the wild.

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59 labs around world handle deadliest pathogens only a quarter score high on safety

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Did the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 result from high-risk research gone wrong? Regardless of the answer, the risk of future pandemics originating from research with dangerous pathogens is real.

The focal point of this lab-leak discussion is the Wuhan Institute of Virology, nestled in the hilly outskirts of Wuhan. It is just one of 59 maximum containment labs in operation, under construction or planned around the world.

Known as biosafety level 4 (BSL4) labs, these are designed and built so that researchers can safely work with the most dangerous pathogens on the planet, ones that can cause serious disease and for which no treatment or vaccines exist. Researchers are required to wear full-body pressurised suits with independent oxygen.

Spread over 23 countries, the largest concentration of BSL4 labs is in Europe, with 25 labs. North America and Asia have roughly equal numbers, with 14 and 13 respectively. Australia has four and Africa three. Like the Wuhan Institute of Virology, three-quarters of the world’s BSL4 labs are in urban centres.

With 3,000m of lab space, the Wuhan Institute of Virology is the largest BSL4 lab in the world, though it will soon be overtaken by the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility at Kansas State University in the US. When it is complete, it will boast over 4,000m of BSL4 lab space.

Most labs are significantly smaller, with half of the 44 labs where data is available being under 200m less than half the size of a professional basketball court or about three-quarters the size of a tennis court.

Around 60 percent of BSL4 labs are government-run public-health institutions, leaving 20 percent run by universities and 20 percent by biodefence agencies. These labs are either used to diagnose infections with highly lethal and transmissible pathogens, or they are used to research these pathogens to improve our scientific understanding of how they work and to develop new drugs, vaccines and diagnostics tests.

But far from all of these labs score well on safety and security. The Global Health Security Index, which measures whether countries have legislation, regulations, oversight agencies, policies and training on biosafety and biosecurity, is instructive. Led by the US-based Nuclear Threat Initiative, the index shows that only about one-quarter of countries with BSL4 labs received high scores for biosafety and biosecurity. This suggests plenty of room for improvement for countries to develop comprehensive systems of biorisk management.

Membership of the International Experts Group of Biosafety and Biosecurity Regulators, where national regulatory authorities share best practices in this field, is another indicator of national biosafety and biosecurity practices.

Only 40 percent of countries with BSL4 labs are members of the forum: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland, the UK and the US. And no lab has yet signed up to the voluntary biorisk management system (ISO 35001), introduced in 2019 to establish management processes to reduce biosafety and biosecurity risks.

The vast majority of countries with maximum containment labs do not regulate dual-use research, which refers to experiments that are conducted for peaceful purposes but can be adapted to cause harm; or gain-of-function research, which is focused on increasing the ability of a pathogen to cause disease.

Three of the 23 countries with BSL4 labs (Australia, Canada and the US) have national policies for oversight of dual-use research. At least three other countries (Germany, Switzerland and the UK) have some form of dual-use oversight, where, for instance, funding bodies require their grant recipients to review their research for dual-use implications.

Rising demand for BSL4 labs

That still leaves a large proportion of scientific research on coronaviruses carried out in countries with no oversight of dual-use research or gain-of-function experiments. This is particularly concerning as gain-of-function research with coronaviruses is likely to increase as scientists seek to better understand these viruses and to identify which viruses pose a higher risk of jumping from animals to humans or becoming transmissible between humans. More countries are expected to seek BSL4 labs, too, in the wake of the pandemic as part of a renewed emphasis on pandemic preparedness and response.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has served as a stark reminder of the risks posed by infectious diseases and the importance of a robust biomedical research enterprise for saving lives, we also need to keep in mind that such research can carry risks of its own. Good science and smart policy, however, can keep those risks in check and allow humanity to reap the benefits of this research.

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Explained: The US investigation into COVID-19 origins

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Once dismissed by most public health experts and government officials, the hypothesis that COVID-19 leaked accidentally from a Chinese lab is now receiving scrutiny under a new US investigation. Experts say the 90-day review ordered on May 26 by President Joe Biden will push American intelligence agencies to collect more information and review what they already have. Former State Department officials under President Donald Trump have publicly pushed for further investigation into virus origins, as have scientists and the World Health Organization.

Many scientists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, say they still believe the virus most likely occurred in nature and jumped from animals to humans. Virus researchers have not publicly identified any key new scientific evidence that might make the lab-leak hypothesis more likely.

Virologists also say it is unlikely that any definitive answer about virus origins will be possible in 90 days. The work to fully confirm origins and pathways of past viruses such as the first SARS or HIV/AIDS has taken years or decades.

A look at what is known about the U.S. investigation of the virus.

WHAT ARE INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES REVIEWING?

Biden ordered a review of what the White House said was an initial finding leading to two likely scenarios, an animal-to-human transmission or a lab leak. The White House statement says two agencies in the 18-member intelligence community lean toward the hypothesis of a transmission in nature; another agency leans toward a lab leak.

One document drawing new attention is a State Department fact sheet published in the last days of Trump’s administration. The memo notes that the U.S. believes three researchers at a Wuhan, China, lab sought medical treatment for a respiratory illness in November 2019. However, the report is not conclusive: The origin and severity of the staffers illness is not known and most people in China regularly go to hospitals, not primary-care physicians, for routine care.

The memo also pointed to the gain of function studies which in theory could enhance the lethality or transmissibility of a virus allegedly done at the Wuhan lab with U.S. backing. However, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins has since adamantly denied that the U.S. supported any gain-of-function research on coronaviruses in Wuhan.

David Feith, who served as deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs under Trump, said he supported Biden’s call for an enhanced review. Implicit in the president’s statement is that there is more to analyze and more to collect than has been analyzed or collected to date,” Feith said.

The Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.

IS CHINA HAMPERING INVESTIGATIONS?

The White House statement criticized China for a lack of transparency, echoing previous criticisms by Democrats and Republicans. The failure to get our inspectors on the ground in those early months will always hamper any investigation into the origin of COVID-19, the White House said.

The Associated Press has reported on China’s interference in the World Health Organizations probes of the virus and its fanning of conspiracy theories online. China has also forced journalists to leave the country in recent years and silenced or jailed whistleblowers from Wuhan and elsewhere.

The lack of transparency in China is a significant and familiar challenge. But that does not in itself signal that something, in particular, is being hidden.

The problem is when you make that announcement (Biden’s call for investigation) in a highly politicized environment, it makes it even less likely that China will cooperate with efforts to find the origins of the virus, said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.

WHAT DO SCIENTISTS BELIEVE ABOUT VIRUS ORIGINS?

The most compelling argument for investigating the possibility of a lab leak is not any new hard evidence, but rather the fact that another pathway for virus spread has not been 100 percent confirmed.

The great probability is still that this virus came from a wildlife reservoir, said Arinjay Banerjee, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization in Saskatchewan, Canada. He pointed to the fact that spillover events when viruses jump from animals to humans are common in nature, and that scientists already know of two similar beta coronaviruses that evolved in bats and caused epidemics when humans were infected, SARS1 and MERS.

However, the case is not completely closed. There are probabilities, and there are possibilities, said Banerjee. Because nobody has identified a virus that’s 100 percent identical to SARS-CoV-2 in any animal, there is still room for researchers to ask about other possibilities.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO CONFIRM THE ORIGIN OF A VIRUS?

Confirming with 100 percent certainty the origin of a virus is often not fast, easy, or always even possible. For example, scientists never confirmed the origin of smallpox before the disease was eradicated through a global vaccination program.

In the case of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) a disease caused by a beta coronavirus, like the current coronavirus researchers first identified the virus in February 2003. Later that year, scientists discovered the likely intermediary hosts: Himalayan palm civets found at live-animal markets in Guangdong, China. But it wasn’t until 2017 that researchers traced the likely original source of the virus to bat caves in Chinas Yunnan province.

HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO UNDERSTAND THE ORIGIN?

From a scientific perspective, researchers are always keen to better understand how diseases evolve. From a public health perspective, if a virus has transitioned to being spread mostly by human-to-human contact, discovering its origins is not as essential to strategies for containing the disease.

Questions of origins and questions of disease control are not the same thing once human-to-human transmission has become common, said Deborah Seligsohn, an expert in environment and public health at Villanova University.

Republicans have pressed for more inquiries into a possible lab leak as part of a broader effort to blame China and vindicate Trump’s handling of the pandemic. Nearly 600,000 people in the United States have died of COVID-19, the highest toll of any country.

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE 90 DAYS?

Many scientists caution that it’s unlikely a 90-day investigation will yield definitive new answers. We rarely get a smoking gun,’” said Stephen Morse, a disease researcher at Columbia University. Even under the best of circumstances we rarely get certainty, just degrees of likelihood.”

Any findings will likely be politically explosive, especially if new evidence comes to light supporting or dismissing the zoonotic transfer or lab-leak theory. And a failure to reach definitive conclusions, almost inevitable after a 90-day review, could provide grist for Trump supporters and opponents alike, as well as embolden conspiracy theorists.

Meanwhile, experts like the Council on Foreign Relations’ Huang suspect China may simply clamp down more, adding another complication to already tense relations. This will likely make it even more challenging to extract concessions from China to allow another team to visit Wuhan, or have unfettered access to investigate there, he said.

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US study concluded COVID-19 may have leaked from Wuhan lab, says report

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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A report on the origins of COVID-19 by a US government national laboratory concluded the hypothesis claiming the virus leaked from a Chinese lab in Wuhan is plausible and deserves further investigation, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the classified document.

The study was prepared in May 2020 by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and was referred by the State Department when it conducted an inquiry into the pandemic’s origins during the final months of the Trump administration, the report added.

US President Joe Biden has asked intelligence officials to focus on whether the virus resulted from a laboratory accident or emerged from human contact with an infected animal.

The report said the study was prepared by Lawrence Livermore’s “Z Division”. The assessment drew on genomic analysis of the SARS-COV-2 virus.

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

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Anthony Fauci calls on China to release medical records of Wuhan lab workers: Report

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Top US infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has called on China to release the medical records of nine people whose ailments might provide vital clues into whether COVID-19 first emerged as the result of a lab leak, the Financial Times reported on Thursday. ”I would like to see the medical records of the three people who are reported to have got sick in 2019. Did they really get sick, and if so, what did they get sick with?” the report https://on.ft.com/3igFTgU quoted Fauci as saying.

The origin of the virus is hotly contested, with US intelligence agencies still examining reports that researchers at a Chinese virology laboratory in Wuhan were seriously ill in 2019 a month before the first COVID-19 cases were reported.

However, Chinese scientists and officials have consistently rejected the lab leak hypothesis, saying the virus could have been circulating in other regions before it hit Wuhan and might have even entered China through imported frozen food shipments, or wildlife trading.

Financial Times reported that Fauci continues to believe the virus was first transmitted to humans through animals, pointing out that even if the lab researchers did have COVID-19, they could have contracted the disease from the wider population.

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British intelligence believes COVID-19 lab leak theory ‘feasible’: Report

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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British intelligence agencies now believe it is ”feasible” that the COVID-19 pandemic began with a coronavirus leak from a Chinese bio laboratory, a media report said here on Sunday, prompting Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi to demand that the WHO must fully investigate the origins of the deadly virus. The origins of the COVID-19 remain a widely debated topic, with some scientists and politicians maintaining that the possibility of a lab leak of the deadly virus exists.

Western intelligence, including in Britain, at first considered there was only a ”remote” chance that it had leaked from the laboratory, where research is conducted into bat-derived coronaviruses, including one closely associated with COVID-19. But there has since been a reassessment, and a lab escape is thought ”feasible”, The Sunday Times reported, citing sources.

China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is near the outbreak’s known epicentre of Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, where the virus first emerged in late 2019 and became a pandemic. More than 170 million confirmed cases have since been confirmed worldwide and at least 3.5 million deaths reported. ”There might be pockets of evidence that take us one way, and evidence that takes us another way. The Chinese will lie either way. I don’t think we will ever know,” said a western intelligence source familiar with UK involvement in the investigation.

Agencies are believed to have few human intelligence sources in China. Gathering data there has focused on trying to recruit on the dark web, where Chinese employees can share secrets anonymously without fear of being caught, the paper said. Citing US diplomatic sources, the paper said there were concerns that if the origin could not be determined, this could happen again and we are one wet market or bio lab away from the next spillover.

Speaking to Sky News on Sunday, Britain’s Vaccines Minister Zahawi insisted that the WHO must be able to fully investigate the origins of the coronavirus. Zahawi said it’s vital that the WHO is ”allowed to conduct its investigation unencumbered” as it seeks to better understand how the initial outbreak began. ”We should leave no stone unturned,” he added.

Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, said: The silence coming from Wuhan is troubling. We need to open the crypt and see what happened to be able to protect ourselves in the future. That means starting an investigation, along with partners around the world and in the WHO.”

Also Read: Wuhan lab staff sought hospital care before COVID-19 outbreak disclosed: Report

Last week, US President Joe Biden ordered the US intelligence agencies to ”redouble” their efforts in investigating the emergence of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic and report back to him in 90 days, amid growing controversy about the virus’s origins from the WIV in China. His announcement came after a US intelligence report found several researchers at the WIV fell ill in November 2019 and had to be hospitalised — a new detail that fuelled fresh public pressure on Biden to order a detailed investigation into the origin of the deadly virus.

Former US President Donald Trump was among those who supported the theory that the virus might have escaped from a bio lab in China. Beijing has been vehemently denying that the coronavirus broke out in Wuhan and took exception to Trump’s reference to it as China virus or Wuhan virus. China asserts that the COVID-19 broke out in different places in the world and China only reported the virus first.

In a detailed article titled The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan’ published in the prestigious Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists early this month, noted British science writer, editor, and author Nicholas Wade raised several questions on the origin of the novel coronavirus. The evidence adds up to a serious case that the SARS2 virus could have been created in a lab, from which it then escaped, wrote Wade, who refers to SARS-CoV-2 virus as SARS2 in short.

Earlier this month, a group of leading UK and US scientists called for more investigation to determine the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the theory of an accidental release from a lab in central China’s Wuhan. In May 2020, the World Health Assembly requested that the WHO director-general work with partners to determine the origins of SARS-CoV-2.

The World Health Organisation conducted an investigation into the origins of the pandemic and concluded in a report that the risk of an accidental leak from the Wuhan Institute, where coronavirus research was being conducted on bats, was ”extremely low.” But the WHO probe has been criticised by the US, United Kingdom, and other governments over its limited access to ”complete, original data and samples.” The WHO study was co-authored by 17 Chinese scientists, several of them from state-run institutions.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow