Old abandoned copper mine adds to mystery of Covid origin

DANAOSHAN.– On the outskirts of a village nestled in the mountains of southwest China, there is a single surveillance camera pointing towards the entrance of a disused copper mine, almost obscured by the density of bamboo.. Night is approaching and the bats are diving.

It is the underground home of the most Covid-19-like virus on Earth, and it’s also the epicenter of growing demands for further investigation into the chances that the pandemic has emerged in a Chinese lab.

In April 2012, six miners contracted a mysterious illness after entering the mine to clean guano from bats. Three of them died. To investigate what happened, Chinese scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (IVW) were summoned and, after taking samples of bats in the mine, they identified several new coronaviruses.

Now, the unanswered questions about the miners’ disease, the viruses found on the site and the research carried out with these viruses have positioned in the strongest hypotheses an idea previously rejected as a conspiracy: that SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for Covid-19, could have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, the city where the first cases were discovered, in December 2019.

So far, the lab’s researchers have never fully answered the lingering questions, and some of the information they have shared is inconsistent. Therefore, many leading scientists are calling for further investigation of the Wuhan institute and whether the pandemic virus could have been stored in its laboratories and escaped from there.

Even some senior public health officials who continue to consider this possibility are unlikely to support the idea of ​​a more comprehensive investigation. They say the World Health Organization (WHO)-led team that visited Wuhan earlier this year did not have access to enough information to conclude that a lab leak was ” extremely unlikely “..

Most of those calling for further examination of the laboratory leak hypothesis say they do not support it over the more obvious alternative: for the virus to have passed from animals to humans outside of it. a laboratory, the kind of natural spread that has become more prevalent in recent decades. There isn’t enough evidence yet to confirm either idea, the scientists say, and neither are they incompatible. The virus could have been a naturally occurring virus that was introduced into a Wuhan lab, deliberately or accidentally, and escaped from there.

However, a growing number of scientists, including the director general of the WHO and a leading American researcher who has worked with the IVW, agree that the Chinese institute needs to provide more information on their work to categorically exclude a laboratory stroke.

In November 2019, three IVW investigators fell ill and called for help at a local hospital, according to a previously undisclosed US intelligence report, although officials expressed differing views on the strength of the evidence. .. In January, the State Department said that in the fall of 2019, several IVW researchers had fallen ill “with symptoms compatible with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illnesses.”

The Biden government recommended that the WHO conduct a further investigation into the possibility of a laboratory leak, strongly endorsing the request from WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who offered to send specialists on site. An investigation is expected to include other labs in Wuhan, not just the IVW, and the team leading it should include lab safety experts, a U.S. health official said.

The issue will likely be discussed at a meeting of WHO’s decision-making body, the World Health Assembly. Diplomatic support to investigate the lab is scarce. Few governments are prepared to defend an investigation that China could veto with a stroke of the pen.

Beijing will surely resist such an effort and has so far strictly controlled access to information. The Chinese government denies that SARS-CoV-2 came from any of its laboratories or infected IVW personnel., and wants the WHO to examine whether the pandemic has not really started outside Chinese borders.

“The United States continues to fabricate inconsistent claims and calls for an investigation to be conducted in Wuhan,” China’s Foreign Ministry said. “It fully demonstrates that some Americans don’t care about the facts or the truth.” And then he cited the WHO-led team’s verdict on the implausibility of a lab leak, and urged Washington to call on the WHO to investigate the first cases in the United States.

Translation of Jaime Arrambide

The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal