Virus Leak Theory Targeted Labs with High Levels of Biosafety

WASHINGTON.- Theory that Covid-19 could be the result of scientific experiments has put the work of the world’s safest biological laboratories in the spotlight.

Although the evidence linking SARS-CoV-2 to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China is strictly circumstantial, several experts want controls at these facilities to be stepped up lest accidental leaks trigger the next pandemic.

The Wuhan laboratory falls into the safest category, commonly referred to as biosafety level 4, or BSL4. These labs are designed to work safely with the most dangerous bacteria and viruses that can cause serious illnesses for which there is no known cure or vaccine.

“There are HVAC filtration systems, so the virus cannot escape through the exhaust duct; all wastewater leaving the facility is treated with chemicals or at high temperatures to make sure nothing is alive, ”explained Gregory Koblentz, director of the graduate program in biodefense at the University. George Mason.

The investigators themselves are highly trained and wear hazmat suits.

There are 59 such installations around the world, according to a report co-authored and published by Koblentz this week. Accidents can sometimes occur in high level facilities, and much more frequently in lower level laboratories, of which there are thousands.

The virus H1N1 Humans fled in 1977 to the Soviet Union and China and spread around the world. In 2001, a mentally disabled employee of a US biological laboratory sent anthrax spores across the country, killing five people.

Two Chinese researchers exposed to SARS in 2004, they spread the disease to others, killing one. In 2014, a handful of smallpox vials were discovered during a U.S. Food and Drug Administration move.

Lynn Klotz, senior researcher at the Center for the Control and Non-Proliferation of Weapons, is sounding the alarm bells about the threats to public safety that these facilities have posed for many years. Human errors constitute over 70% of errors in laboratories, ”he said.

There is disagreement between the US government, which funded the bat coronavirus research in Wuhan, and some independent scientists, over whether this work was controversial ‘gain-of-function’ research ( GOF).

Gain-of-function research involves modifying pathogens to make them more transmissible, more deadly, or better able to escape treatment and vaccines., all this to learn how to fight them better.

This area has been controversial for a long time. Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch said he was concerned “that a strain of the virus could be created and if it infected a lab worker, it could not only kill that lab worker, but also cause a pandemic. “.

“Research is not necessary and does not contribute to the development of drugs or vaccines,” added molecular biologist Richard Ebright of Rutgers University.

In 2014, the U.S. government announced a break in federal funding for this type of work, which led to a framework in 2017 that would review each request on a case-by-case basis. But the process has been criticized for its lack of transparency and credibility. Already last year, an NGO received funding from the United States as part of an investigation to “predict the potential for spread” of the coronavirus from bats to humans in Wuhan.

Asked by Congress this week, Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health denied it amounted to for-profit research, but Ebright said it clearly was.

None of this means that Covid-19 has definitely left a lab; in fact, there is no strong scientific evidence to support the natural origin or the hypothesis of a laboratory accident, Ebright said.

But there are certain lines of circumstantial evidence in favor of the latter. For example, Wuhan is about 1,000 kilometers north of the bat caves that harbor the ancient virus, away from the area where the animals are stolen.. However, scientists in Wuhan are known to have made routine trips to these caves to collect samples.

Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute, said there was no indication that research into risky pathogens had declined after the pandemic; in fact, “it may have been widened”.

Last year, Chan published research showing that unlike SARS, SARS-CoV-2 was not evolving rapidly when first detected in humans, further circumstantial evidence that could point to a laboratory origin.

Chan sees herself as “undecided” on competing hypotheses, but is not in favor of banning risky investigations, fearing they could go underground.

One solution “could be as simple as moving these research institutes to extremely remote areas,” he said.

Agencia AFP

THE NATION

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