Only days after a group of scientists urged a deeper probe into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, a report published in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has fuelled the unconfirmed theory that the virus may have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
The report revealed that three researchers at the WIV fell ill and sought medical care at a hospital in November 2019, weeks before the first COVID-19 cases were officially recorded. It also notes that “the disclosure of the number of researchers, the timing of their illnesses and their hospital visits come on the eve of a meeting of the World Health Organisation’s decision-making body, which is expected to discuss the next phase of an investigation into COVID-19’s origins.”
The early months of the pandemic quickly saw the lab leak hypothesis quashed, primarily through a letter published by 27 public health scientists in the prestigious Lancet journal. “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” the authors wrote. As nations battled against the spread of the virus within their borders, the debate over the origins of the virus appeared to lose some of its zeal.
But the discovery that the organiser of the February Lancet letter, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York Peter Daszak’s involvement as a financier of coronavirus research at the WIV rekindled suspicions that the lab-leak hypothesis may have more footing on which to stand on than previously thought.
The revelations were made via an extensive piece written by journalist Nicholas Wade who, having sorted through the available publically disclosed evidence, put forth an argument that the emergence of the virus from the WIV appeared the more plausible scenario.
Wade’s hypothesis also hinged heavily on the numerous gain-of-function experiments – experiments that involve manipulating a virus’ genetic code to increase its transmissibility and virulence potential – concerning bat viruses, led by China’s ‘Bat Lady’ Shi Zheng Li at the WIV.
The risk of a virus leak resulting from these experiments, some experts including noted American molecular biologist, Richard H Ebright have contended, would have been high especially in the absence of appropriate safety and containment protocols.
Then there is also the mission of the Independent Panel, strung together by the 73rd World Health Assembly, and sent to China in February 2021. The group was to undertake an investigation of COVID-19’s origins in Wuhan but the report it produced was even cast into doubt by WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus himself.
In fact, in early April, Ghebreyesus publically critiqued the report, adding that it hadn’t sufficiently examined the possibility of a lab leak. “It did not receive the same depth of attention and work as the other hypotheses,” he noted at the time.
Wade’s report along with the WHO director-general’s criticism of the probe have done little to end speculation that COVID-19 may have emerged from the WIV. China, which has consistently refuted any contentions that its researchers were at fault for the outbreak, was also, unsurprisingly, swift in condemning the latest WSJ report.
“The report you mentioned about three people getting sick, that is not true,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian at a press briefing on Monday in Beijing. But the opaqueness with which China has conducted its own probe has only worked to induce increased suspicion that it may be hiding information critical in determining where the virus did, truly, originate. It then appears that, until more conclusive evidence emerges, the lab-leak hypothesis, branded a ‘conspiracy theory’ by China, will refuse to go away.
