COVID's Elusive Origins : WHO Report

 Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus Fabrice Coffrini/AFP

"Although the team has concluded that a laboratory leak is the least likely hypothesis, this requires further investigation, potentially with additional missions involving specialist experts, which I am ready to deploy."

"[The international expert team had] expressed the difficulties they encountered in accessing raw data [while in China]."

"[The report also] raises further questions that will need to be addressed by further studies."

"I expect future collaborative studies to include more timely and comprehensive data sharing."

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization

 

Members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the novel coronavirus arrive by car at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, in China’s central Hubei province on February 3, 2021. (Hector Retamal/AFP)

"I still think the most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory escape."

"Other people don't believe that, that's fine, science will eventually figure it out."

Robert Redfield, virologist, former head, Centres for Disease Control

"[The Institute saw] no disruptions or incidents."

"[A formal audit of the laboratory was] far beyond what our team is mandated to do or has the tools and capabilities to do."

"The fact that we assessed this hypothesis [that the SARS-CoV-2 virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab] as extremely unlikely doesn't mean it's ruled out."

Peter Ben Embarek, WHO investigative team

"We were allowed to ask whatever questions we wanted, and we got answers. The only evidence that people have for a lab leak is that there is a lab in Wuhan."

"A thousand samples [of animals sold at the Huanan market when the WHO investigative team took samples from 188 animals of 18 species at the market, all of which tested negative] is a great start, but there’s more to do."

WHO team member Peter Daszak

Animal markets like this one in China could be a source of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the WHO report.   Credit: Eric Lafforgue/Art In All Of Us/Corbis via Getty

The World Health Organization's investigative team of ten travelled to Wuhan, China for the express purpose of conducting an unbiased, scientific survey of any available evidence in an attempt to determine the source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that swept the world when it first surfaced as a strange new pneumonia-like pathogen deadlier and more infectious than most viruses that erupt from time to time in the East and spread eventually worldwide. The WHO team had plenty of local assistance in their diligent search for answers during their two-week stay.

There were quite a few interviews and on-site examinations, bearing in mind that the team had to first isolate on arriving in China before they could proceed. With them throughout their investigative exercise was a matching team of Chinese scientists to give them aid and direction, some 17 in number. The People's Republic of China was deeply and sincerely invested in the search for the origins of the novel coornavirus, making certain that at all times the WHO researchers were escorted by Chinese officialdom.

WHO microbiologists and medical researchers fully intended to do a thorough and creditable job of searching for answers while conducting interviews under constant supervision in the presence of government officials. Needless to say every individual who was questioned to gain a wider and more full understanding of what had occurred would have been under a certain level of constraint, testifying under the fixed scrutiny of government agents. In their minds no doubt, the fate of Li Wenliang accused of 'spreading harmful rumours' when he first alerted his colleagues to the presence of a threatening new virus. Before he himself died of COVID.

"It's essentially a highly-chaperoned, highly-curated study tour ... this group of experts only saw what the Chinese government wanted them to see", explained Jamie Metzl, former senior adviser to then-U.S.President Bill Clinton. What is known is simply that a novel coronavirus erupted from some source within walking distance of the high-security laboratory under the aegis of the Wuhan Institute of Virology specializing in the study of coronaviruses. It is also known that the laboratory is located not far from the wild animal 'wet' market where both domestic animals and exotic animals were sold, dead and alive.

And it was the market that Chinese authorities pointed to as the unfortunate source of cross-species, animal-to-human viral vector. These wet markets exist throughout Asia where an insatiable appetite for exotic animals like bats, snakes, pangolins and many other creatures can be satisfied. Crossing the species barrier for pathogens is rare, but it does happen. It did with AIDS and we know what agony that led to throughout the world.

"We could show the virus was circulating in the market as early as December 2019."

"A lot of good leads were suggested in this report, and we anticipate that many, if not all of them, will be followed through because we owe it to the world to understand what happened, why and how to prevent it from happening again."

Peter Ben Embarek,  co-leader, WHO investigative team

Long before the novel coronavirus was identified, the Wuhan Institute of Virology had come in for lax safety regulation criticism when a U.S. team of scientists had visited the premises and felt alarm at the situation prevailing there. That very same laboratory is involved in a security breach that took place in Canada's own National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg when a high-profile Chinese scientist and her husband, both employed there, were escorted from the lab never to return. Involved in an unauthorized transfer of highly sensitive biological samples from there to the Wuhan lab.

The team of WHO investigators appear to have reached the conclusion through a joint report that a lab escape of the coronavirus was to be regarded as "extremely unlikely" following a brief examination of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Four hours were spent at the facility by the WHO team, the investigation limited to interviews with laboratory staffers where the investigators were informed that no disruptions or incidents occurred, and nor did the WHO investigators request collaborative documentation.

The Beijing government appears to have withheld case data from outside investigators, the WHO team no exception. China, it would appear, deigned not to honour a request to turn over 174 health records from the first patients in Wuhan to contract COVID-19: "They showed us a couple of examples, but that's not the same as doing all of them, which is standard epidemiological investigation", explained Dominic Dwyer of the WHO team.

What the WHO team reported was that 92 cases of Wuhan patients exhibiting COVID-like symptoms were documented in October of 2019, quite a few weeks before the officially recognized first cases were reported by the Chinese government. The investigators were given Chinese assurances that serological tests indicated no link to COVID-19.

 

 

Life in Wuhan, China Carries On ....

"Most scientists studying the origins of COVID-19 have concluded that the SARS-CoV-2 virus probably evolved naturally and infected humans via incidental contact with a wild or domesticated animal. But a few persistent voices, including respected microbiologist and biosafety advocate Richard Ebright, PhD, continue to highlight circumstantial evidence suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a biohazard laboratory in Wuhan, China. Such an escape might have occurred via accidental infection of a lab worker who came into contact with the isolated virus, an infected lab animal, or animal waste.

For now, we cannot definitively rule out either origin story—a lab accident or a natural animal-to-human transmission. Determining the origins of this pandemic is unlikely to help current efforts to treat and cure the disease. It could, however, be an important determinant for efforts to prevent future outbreaks."

"Most arguments in favor of the lab accident theory are based on geography. Wuhan, the site of COVID-19’s first reported cases in late 2019, is also home to two of China’s most advanced biological laboratories. The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) has come under special scrutiny because it hosts China’s only biosafety level 4 lab facilities."

"Ebright, a former Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and current laboratory director at Rutgers University, is the most prominent scientist espousing the possibility of a lab escape. He raised biosafety concerns about WIV when it opened in 2017, as did Tim Trevan, founder of CHROME Biosafety and Biosecurity Consulting. Ebright has long opposed the expansion of preventative research into dangerous pathogens, and he views the possible lab escape of SARS-CoV-2 as strong support for that position."

Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News

"It  certainly couldn't have been Wuhan ... surely another person brought it in. Or surely it came from some other product brought from outside."

"There were just certain conditions for it to appear here."

Chen, wet-market vendor, Wuhan, China

 

"The first cluster of cases was there, so at least it would be of interest to find out the origin of those and put forward a few hypotheses, like whether it's more likely from the wild animals or perhaps points to a human super-spreader."

Jin Dong-Yan, professor of virology, University of Hong Kong

"There is new evidence to show that China locked down all domestic traffic internally by end January 2020 but pushed to open foreign travel till end March. Data from Tom Tom traffic index, a traffic location site that covers 416 cities across 57 countries show that as a result of this strategy, China, intentionally or otherwise, was able to lockdown its cities unknown to the world. While this reduced the spread of the Corona virus within China, China’s aggressive foreign travel policy lead to a virus explosion worldwide."

Sandip Sen, The Economic Times, April 30, 2020 

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Tourists wearing face masks line up outside the Yellow Crane Tower in Wuhan, China on September 3.

HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/AFP via Getty Images

 

The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China where vendors set up their wares in small stalls was a popular place for individuals to shop as well as local restaurant owners who would start their day by passing through the market to pick up fresh-caught fish and bring it back to their restaurants to begin the day's menu preparations. Most Asian cities have such live markets, Tokyo, Japan has a large celebrated market, Ueno district's Koromon market, where crowds of shoppers converge on the market to sample live fish. These markets are part of the food culture, a part of daily shopping life.

On December 31, 2019, four cases of a mysterious type of pneumonia appeared at local Wuhan hospitals and were linked to the Huanan market and overnight it was no longer open for business, taking shoppers by surprise the following morning. A month later, the city went into a strict 76-day lockdown on hours' notice, barring people from leaving their homes. A severely restrictive move that represented the start of a hugely successful gambit to control the new virus's spread. Hubei Province itself was border-shuttered to the rest of China.

 

Travelers walk through the main hall of the Hongqiao Railway Station in Shanghai on Jan. 18. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

On the other hand, China kept its national borders open so Chinese could celebrate the Lunar New Year as usual, and the population spread out in its customary holiday travel pattern as millions of Chinese travelled back to their home cities and provinces in a tradition as important to the Chinese as Christmas is to Westerners. A massive human migration takes place as individuals travel back to their hometowns. People in China are estimated to make close to 3 billion trips over the 40-day travel period, or Chunyun, of the Lunar New Year holiday. It's estimated that 5 million people left Wuhan, the epicentre of the pandemic before the travel ban of January 23, 2020. An estimated million Chinese went abroad, to Europe and elsewhere during that period.

 

 The disease spread rapidly throughout China and to neighbouring countries. Despite the aberration of the massive migration for the Lunar New Year celebrations, China and its neighbours then cracked down on their populations, enacting draconian social distancing laws and total lockdowns. Their success in bringing the internal spread of the disease following a massive infection rate in China which led to hastily built hospitals to handle the load and patients being isolated in massive temporary quarters with cots lined up one after another in proximity to one another, did succeed in eventually quelling the massive outbreak.

Which then spread to Europe, devastating the continent which is now grappling in desperation with its second and third waves of the domineering recurring nightmare. Globally, over one-and-a-half million people have died of the effects of SARS-CoV-2. Initially, Beijing had bristled at the global community's attempts to close their borders to Chinese visitors, claiming the move was clearly racist in nature; even the World Health Organization supported China's umbrage, chiding the rest of the world for their reaction. The United States now hosts a ravaging beast of a pandemic.

When both Beijing and the WHO came under criticism, particularly from the U.S. administration, both bridled and responded they had each acted with alacrity to stem the tide of the viral contagion, acting with due respect and regard to public safety globally. China took further umbrage when the virus was referred to as the China virus, and the WHO came up with a neutral designation for the scourge. To their credit, Chinese scientists released to the world at large the genetic sequence of the virus, enabling scientists elsewhere to get on with research to find a vaccine against the virus.

In Wuhan, the city is once again 'normal'. But the wet market remains closed, the stalls shuttered. The origin of the virus remains a topic of fierce political and scientific enquiry. Beijing circulated the claim that the virus originated elsewhere, in Spain or Italy, and was then brought to China where it surfaced to appear as the origins of the virus. Residents of Wuhan certainly don't believe the virus really originated there, but was brought to the city by travellers. When a second wave erupted in China, a strain of the virus brought back by Chinese returning from trips abroad again, it gave impetus to the notion that the virus originated abroad.

Beijing and the United States continue to spar with one another along with other countries, accused by China of bias against the Chinese. Even yet, a team of World Health Organization experts has still to visit Wuhan to gather  information. Origin-tracing efforts, warn health authorities in China and elsewhere, could take years and in the end inconclusive results may be yielded. More recently Chinese diplomats and state media claim their belief the market was not the origin of the virus but the victim of the disease, which originated somewhere other than China.

According to experts the market is critical to any investigation, unlikely to be dismantled even though the bulk of the research would rely on samples sored immediately following the outbreak. Access to the market area is heavily restricted. The bustling building with its hundreds of stalls sectioned off into areas for red meat, for seafood, and for vegetables is now quiet and abandoned. Local government has placed traditional Chinese paintings over the semi-permanent blue barricades the area is encircled by. Wooden boards line the interior stalls and windows.

 

Chinese tourists crowd together on the Badaling section of the Great Wall of China in Beijing on October 4, 2020. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

"A report issued by a Shanghai-based online travel agency said people from over 100 Chinese cities had booked to travel to nearly 500 destinations across over 90 countries and regions."

"Thailand, Japan, Indonesia and Singapore are among the most popular destinations while Nordic countries, the United Arab Emirates and Spain have seen the fastest growth of Chinese visitors".

"Traveling schedules covering cultural sites or winter sports that can be enjoyed by a big family are the most popular choices, indicating that Chinese are willing to enjoy high-quality travel experiences."

"Lvmama, another Shanghai-based online travel agency, said in its latest report that more convenient transport, easier visa application procedures and Chinese people's upgrading demand for leisure were major factors in China's booming outbound tourism."

"In 2018, 140 million Chinese traveled outbound, marking a year-on-year increase by 13.5 percent, according to the China Tourism Academy."

XinhuaNet, December 13, 2019

Wuhan has not reported any new locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 since May. A local restaurateur speaks of the market's closure and public panic over the safety of imported seafood, increasing the cost of ingredient procurement substantially. Above the empty, closured market, shops reopened in June selling optometry equipment and eye-ware. Guards at the upper entrance to the market take temperatures, warning that no videos or photos may be taken inside the building. "Maybe some people have some bad feelings about it, but now it's just an empty building ... who feels anxious about an empty building?" a shop assistant remarked.

 

People at a heritage theme park in Hunan province in China, wear face masks and traditional dress.Credit: Yang Huafeng/China News Service/Getty