One of the popular theory with the origin of pandemic linked to the virus orginiating from the Chinese lab seem to have been refuted by the World Health Organization investigating the source of the virus in Wuhan in January.
What did the WHO findings say?
The investigation of the WHO reached its conclusion saying it was “extremely unlikely” that the pathogen originated in a top-security lab in the ground-zero Chinese city, according to the news agency AFP.
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The WHO report accessed by the AFP before its official release has mentioned Covid-19 being probably first passed to humans from a bat through an intermediary animal, with investigators nearly ruling out the laboratory leak theory.
However, the report is yet to completely put to rest doubts which were first raised by former US president Donald Trump and others, which later gained steam as Chinese secrecy and the inability to pinpoint a natural source only led to suspicion.
What are the insights about Wuhan Institute of Virology’s lab?
High Security
The institute has a lab with a biosafety rating of “P4”, considered to be the highest possible, determined by the level of danger and resulting security measures posed by the pathogens studied there. P4-level pathogens include those which cause diseases such as Ebola.
As per AFP, the P4 lab is Asia’s first which costed 300 million yuan ($42 million) at the time of opening in 2018. It houses the largest virus bank in Asia, with more than 1,500 strains. A P3 lab — the biosafety level that includes coronaviruses — has been in operation at the site since 2012.
Critical Research
The institute is engaged in researching about some of the world’s most dangerous diseases and previously conducted investigations into the links between bats and disease outbreaks in China. Infact, the scientists shared insights on the Covid-19 pathogen in the early days of the outbreak in Wuhan.
In February of 2020, researchers in the lab published work concluding that the genetic makeup of the new virus was about 80 percent similar to the SARS coronavirus, and 96 percent identical to a coronavirus found in bats.
While many scientists think the virus originated in bats and later jumped to people though another still-undetermined mammal, and thrived in humans in late 2019 at a wet market in Wuhan which is popular for selling wildlife species as food item.
Liang Wannian, head of the Chinese contingent of the WHO mission, said at the mission’s conclusion that animal transmission remained the likely route, but “the reservoir hosts remain to be identified”.
The ‘Lab Leak’ theory
Earlier, US diplomatic cables reported by the Washington Post raised concerns in Washington about the safety standards in the Wuhan facility.
Shi Zhengli, one of China’s leading experts on bat coronaviruses and deputy director of the P4 lab, also raised suspicion during an interview last year with Scientific American magazine. She had then shared her initial anxiety over whether the virus had leaked from her lab. However, later she revealed that its gene sequence differed from viruses held at the lab, and denied any leak saying she would “bet her life” , according to Chinese state media.
What does critics say?
Even as the WHO report negated any such theory, but there are valid questions surrounding the lab, with critics arguing that the WHO team’s investigative hands may have been tied by strict parameters set by its Chinese hosts. Some have pointed at the team members spending only four hours at the virology institute, just an hour at the wet market, and several days inside their hotel without venturing out into the city.
In a subsequent interview with AFP, team’s leader Peter Ben Embarek also voiced “frustration” at lack of access to raw data while in China.