The 4 key points that China refuses to answer about the origin of COVID-19

Pressure from the United States for new research to determine the origins of the coronavirus – including whether it leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan – raises a key question: What has China not disclosed?

This weekend, Group of Seven leaders will demand a new transparent study, convened by the World Health Organization, into the origins of this virus, according to a draft statement seen by Bloomberg News. However, so far they have been vague as to exactly what they want.

In his statement giving intelligence agencies 90 days to redouble their efforts on the origin of Covid-19, President Joe Biden asks them to submit “specific questions for China.” Beijing officials have repeatedly denied that the virus escaped the lab, pointing to a WHO report earlier this year that the most likely origin was natural.

But WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the hypothesis of a laboratory leak needed further investigation, adding that he was ready to deploy more resources. He said scientists would have “full access to data”, including biological samples from at least September 2019. The European Union has also requested more data.

Here’s what a new study should look at:

– Details of the investigation of the Wuhan laboratory. A big unanswered question is what kind of work was actually done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Shi Zhengli, the principal investigator of the bat coronavirus laboratory, said in an article published in March 2020 on American scientist that the genetic code of the virus that causes Covid-19 does not match any of the samples in his laboratory. He also told the WHO team that all staff have tested negative for Covid-19 antibodies.

Even so, heResearchers have yet to gain access to all coronavirus isolates and genome sequence data from Wuhan labs. And they also did not have access to the logbooks andThe minutes of the investigations which were carried out on the coronaviruses, in particular the viruses with the sequence of the bat RaTG13, which is related to SARS-CoV-2, the pathogen on which the Covid-19 is based.

There are also doubts about so the institute has conducted gain-of-function experiments, in which researchers manipulate natural viruses to see if they can become more deadly or transmissible.

– Medical records of laboratory workers. the the Wall Street newspaper reported last month that U.S. intelligence services said three lab researchers fell ill enough in November 2019 to seek treatment in hospital. Various media also reported that the Chinese government restricted access to an abandoned copper mine in southwest China, where researchers from the Wuhan lab collected coronavirus samples after a 2012 incident in which six miners fell ill with a “mysterious” respiratory illness.

Shi, the bat coronavirus researcher, told the WHO team that all staff have tested negative for Covid-19 antibodies. the China daily reported again this week that no staff at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had contracted the virus that caused Covid-19.

Even like that, The researchers did not have access to the medical records and samples collected from staff at the institute who requested hospital treatment at the end of 2019. And they would also like to see the medical records and samples collected from minors in the southwest China.

– More information on the first cases. To identify the first human cases in December 2019, the WHO team reviewed health records, mortality data, retail sales trends for cold and cough medicines, and reported influenza patterns. and similar serious respiratory infections in the two months leading up to the outbreak in Wuhan.

International researchers have examined 76,000 cases in more than 200 medical centers, and Chinese researchers have also analyzed around 4,500 patient samples stored in hospitals in Wuhan and other parts of China.

Despite this, the WHO team that visited Wuhan earlier this year offered a more in-depth analysis of the respiratory disease cases that occurred in Wuhan in October and November 2019.

– Wuhan Wet Markets Documentation. To identify possible animal sources, 11,000 blood samples from livestock and poultry in 31 provinces were analyzed, as well as 1,914 samples from 35 species of wildlife. Researchers in China have looked for SARS-CoV-2 in 12,000 animal swabs and 50,000 samples from 300 different species of wild animals. All the results were negative.

Researchers this week discovered that mink, masked palm civets, raccoon dogs, Siberian weasels, Chinese pig badgers and bamboo rats were among 38 species of animals sold live in Wuhan markets between May 2017 and November 2019.

Even so, there remain gaps in the evidence supporting the theory that the virus has spread to humans from animals. WHO researchers have not seen full documentation of animal species sold live in Wuhan markets in 2019., when they were present and a list of their vendors and suppliers.

The WHO team has requested that epidemiological, clinical, molecular and environmental data be collected and analyzed in other countries to better understand the origins of the virus, as some reports suggest it may have circulated outside of China before December 2019. They are also looking for more research to understand if and under what conditions it could be transmitted to humans through contaminated products.

With information from Bloomberg

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