‘Virus unlikely to have leaked from lab’ Â
Context: The virus responsible for COVID-19 was unlikely to have leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, and the evidence pointed to natural origins, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) and China joint expert team that concluded a visit to Wuhan.
Details:
- The team also concluded that there was no indication of SARS-CoV-2 having spread among the population there prior to December 2019, when Wuhan’s hospitals first began reporting a pneumonia outbreak.
- The team of 17 international experts and 17 Chinese scientists spent the past two weeks visiting hospitals, a seafood market that was one of the earliest clusters, and laboratories in Wuhan.
Four possibilities:
- The team examined four pathways: direct transmission from wildlife, transmission through intermediate hosts, transmission via cold chain products, and a laboratory leak.
- Officials in China have been strongly pushing back against the laboratory leak theory, while recently also suggesting that the virus may have come to China via cold chain products from outside the country.
- Reports from Wuhan said the team spent around an hour at the market and four hours at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and met scientists there, including China’s leading bat coronavirus expert, Shi Zhengli, who has been researching bat coronaviruses in the laboratory.
- Therefore, we have tried to find what other animal species were introduced and moving in and out of the city that could have potentially introduced the virus, in particular at the Huanan seafood market.
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