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A question without answer.
It has remained at the root of the pandemic since it was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan almost a year and a half ago.
Many scientists claim that this likely happened after jumping from an animal to a human, but last week there was much talk again about the theory that the pathogen could have left a lab.
Specifically, from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
For many months, this possibility has been described as a conspiracy theory. China categorically denies this.
But Joe Biden, President of the United States, announced an urgent investigation to dispel any doubt. British spies, also involved in the investigation, believe the hypothesis is “feasible”.
The Wuhan laboratory is one of the Asian giant’s most prestigious scientific institutions.
What else do we know about this center? What are the theories that could be at the origin of the pandemic?
The first coronavirus outbreak was detected in Wuhan. We are now trying to find out whether it could have come from a laboratory in the same city.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology was founded in 1956 and is administered by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It was one of the first national institutions established after the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
It focuses on studies of virology, applied microbiology and biotechnology.
In recent years, “the study of the pathogenicity of emerging infectious diseases has become one of the main areas of research,” says the institution on its website.
The lab boasts of great achievements in animal studies of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS) and avian influenza viruses.
This center houses the first level 4 biosafety laboratory in China. These types of facilities operate with dangerous pathogens that do not have vaccines or treatments.
They study animals, such as bats, and viruses that may turn into future pandemics.
These centers generally apply a research technique which has long been of interest to part of the scientific community.
This is gain of function, which changes the functions of a virus to study it thoroughly.
In China and Southeast Asia, bat research is common to prevent future pathogens.
“Gain of function increases the capabilities of the pathogen, such as its transmissibility, lethality, or its ability to overcome an immune response or vaccines and drugs,” says Richard H. Ebright, molecular biologist at Rutgers University. New Jersey, United States.
“The research on the gain of function creates new pathogens, which do not exist in nature, and which present a risk of creating new diseases accidentally or deliberately”, adds the researcher.
In 2015, a multinational group of 15 scientists working with the Wuhan Institute created a chimeric virus from two different coronaviruses. The result was a more dangerous version with the potential to become a pandemic.
The study was published in the journal Nature. Among the researchers was Professor Shi Zhengli, known as the “Batwoman of China” for her field work with bats to predict and prevent new coronavirus outbreaks.
Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli has agreed with the WHO to visit her laboratory in Wuhan in early 2021.
In other work similar to that published in 2015, “researchers looked for new viruses in caves in rural areas, brought them to labs, genetically engineered them, and studied them in Wuhan,” says Ebright.
Funders for this project included the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH), now headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci.
In recent months, the results of this study have served as the basis for unverified theories that the coronavirus that causes covid-19 was created in a laboratory, promoted among others by former United States President Donald Trump. .
The journal Nature clarifies that there is no evidence that this theory is true and that scientists continue to view an animal as the most likely origin of the coronavirus.
Fauci, during a Senate hearing last week on NIH involvement in fieldwork in Wuhan, denied that the funds had been earmarked for the alleged gain of office.
However, he admitted that there was no guarantee that the scientists ultimately lied about their experiments. “You never know,” he said.
Dr Anthony Fauci was questioned in the Senate about the involvement of the NIH in the investigations of the Wuhan laboratory.
The U.S. government cut funding for such research in China last year, despite many experts insisting that it is vital to prevent further outbreaks of the coronavirus.
Biden ordered the recent inquest to receive an inconclusive report on the origins of the coronavirus, including whether it was from human contact with an infected animal or from a lab accident.
The theory of the crash was also fueled by reports attributed to U.S. intelligence sources that three members of the Institute of Virology were admitted to hospital in November 2019, several weeks before China recognized the first case of the new virus.
Earlier this year, a team of researchers sent by the WHO produced a report with Chinese scientists who, without coming to a definitive conclusion on the origin of the virus, stressed that it was “extremely unlikely” that a laboratory emerges.
The theory of the origin of the coronavirus in a lab gained strength after United States President Joe Biden ordered an urgent investigation.
But countries like the United States or the United Kingdom, and the director general of the WHO himself, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, doubted that the research was not “sufficiently extensive”.
Other specialists have expressed their skepticism given the delay in the investigation and the limits imposed by Beijing on its execution.
John Sudworth, the BBC’s China correspondent, says there has always been a lot of circumstantial evidence to support both the animal-human jump theory and laboratory escape.
“There are many precedents in which researchers in a laboratory are accidentally infected with the virus they are working on. The Wuhan outbreak happened practically outside the doors of the world’s leading laboratory to collect, study and d ‘bat coronavirus experiment,’ said Sudworth recently analyzed.
Whether the theory of the origin of the coronavirus is ratified or rejected in the Wuhan laboratory, the medical attention in recent days has allowed several scientists to warn of the danger of biosafety laboratories.
Scientists demand better control over the study and modification of viruses in laboratories.
Those who work with pathogens of different types are classified according to their degree of potential biohazard, with 1 being the lowest risk and 4 being the highest risk.
About fifty laboratories around the world, including the one in Wuhan, have a level 4.
According to some scientists, international controls on institutions where dangerous viruses are created and studied do not seem quite strong.
“Lax biosecurity standards and the lack of a comprehensive global risk-benefit assessment are vulnerabilities that we must address,” says Ebright.
The specialist insists on the fact that the technique of gain of function, now at the center of the debates, does not compensate in a balance between risks and benefits and that there are other less risky means of investigating pathogens.
Whether or not it is proven that covid-19 came out of a lab, “the next pandemic could have this origin” if “discussions between policy and the public on these vulnerabilities” are not developed.
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