The Mysterious Origins of SARS-CoV-2 Virus

The Huanan Seafood Market was previously identified as a location for a potential virus spillover, Dr Eddie Holmes says. Source: Getty

"The discussion was 'where could a disease emerge?' Well, here's the place -- that's why I went."

"I've been to a few of these markets, but this was a big one -- it felt like a disease incubator -- exactly the sort of place you would expect a disease to emerge."

"[There were] crates of wildlife stacked on top of each other [including fish, snakes, rodents and raccoon dogs -- known to be susceptible to COVID-19]." 

"In my mind, the wildlife trade is the most likely source of it [the virus]. The role of that market is still uncertain, but there was clearly a lot of transmission and to me it smells like there's a strong link -- we need to follow it through."

“My concern is that the finger pointing has got so bad, will that happen? I think China just doesn’t want it to be China… so then the question is, are we actually going to see all the data? I honestly don’t know. But the more the politics gets into it, the less likely we will."

Dr.Eddie Holmes, evolutionary biologist, virologist, University of Sydney

"We know how easily SARS-CoV-2 spread from minks to mink farmers in Europe."

"So it's likely the farmer was the index case who then took it to the market, where there was a super-spreading event."

Dr.Dale Fisher, infectious diseases expert, Division of Infectious Diseases, National University Hospital, Singapore

Members of the Wuhan Hygiene Emergency Response Team leaving the closed Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in mid-January 2020    Credit: NOEL CELIS/AFP via Getty Images

According to a British scientist, recalling  his trip to China in 2014 when he was a guest of the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control and was taken by scientists there to the Huanan seafood market, back then the Chinese biologists working at the laboratory were of the solid opinion that the open air 'wet' market was a potential source for the emergence of a zoonotic; the transference of a virus from animal to man. Dr.Holmes was taken as a courtesy and a sharing among scientists to view the market for himself in the company of his scientific Chinese peers.

 

The visit, as Dr.Holmes explains the situation, was involved with a larger project to hunt down new pathogens with the potential to become pandemics in China. Of his 2014 visit, Dr.Holmes recalled the market as he saw it then which is now shuttered, as having been comprised of a sprawling network of narrow covered streets. At the time of his visit it was late afternoon, not a particularly busy time for the merchants and shoppers. He saw wildlife, dead and alive in crates. 

 

He was witness to one animal escaping its crate: "It had got out and somebody was clubbing it", he said of the animal that had been bludgeoned in front of him. He had no knowledge, he added, whether the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control had increased its disease surveillance, or had introduced safety measures in the years following his visit and before the emergence of the pandemic. 

 

This was the notorious market that gained global attention at a time when the first cases of COVID-19 -- reported originally as a 'mystery pneumonia' -- were discovered in people who worked at the Huanan market, and those who shopped there. Two-thirds of the 41 people officially identified as having COVID and hospitalized with it -- had been exposed to the market. That exposure, and the infectious virus going on to infect hundreds of thousands in Wuhan, led to the market being shuttered in January of 2020.

 

According to experts, the site is acknowledged as having had a significant role in the beginning circulation of COVID-19. "No firm conclusion", however, was contained in a report from the World Health Organization on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, to identify the precise role of the Huanan market, though there was confirmation that the virus was most likely to have leaped from bats to humans through an intermediary animal, as yet unknown.

 

Live wild animals in crates stacked on top of each other, taken in October 2014 during Dr Eddie Holmes' trip to the market   Credit: Eddie Holmes

What is indisputable is that wildlife trade in general and wet markets particularly have been recognized for a long time as being linked to emerging new pathogens. Evidence exists that SARS leaped the biological gap to humans in 2002 at markets in Guangdong, China.  

Early in 2020 Chinese researchers had collected roughly a thousand samples from the Huanan market, swabbing rubbish bins, doors and stalls, as well as stray cats and mice, and found there widespread contamination "compatible with introduction of the virus through infected people, infected animals or contaminated products". 

Four days following the first known case of COVID, the first individual with a traceable link to the market became ill on December 12, suggesting COVID-19 might have been spread under the radar in parts of Wuhan simultaneously even before circulation was amplified through the Huanan market.

 

Wet markets are widespread across China and Asia where residents can buy meat, seafood and fresh produce. Pictured is one such market in Nanning, Guangxi. Source: Getty

"When wild animals are kept in cages or pens, slaughtered and dressed in open market areas, these areas become contaminated with body fluids, faeces and other waste, increasing the risk of transmission of pathogens to workers and customers and potentially resulting in spillover of pathogens to other animals in the market."

WHO guidance report

 

"[No evidence that live wildlife was still sold at the market was found – though it was noted that both Dr Holmes’ pictures and] unverified photographs and videos in media reports [suggest otherwise – and none of 457 animal samples taken from the market between January and March 2020 tested positive for Sars-Cov-2.]"

"The manager informed the teams the market was cleaned twice a day, morning and evening. Pests and rats are sought out and killed; holes were closed. Rigorous cleaning was done once or twice a week." "Even though there are rooms above some stalls, vendors were not allowed to live in the market."

Joint WHO-China team report

Inside Huanan food market in October 2014. Dr Eddie Holmes described the site as dirty, not particularly crowded, but with areas full of wild animals in crates    Credit: Eddie Holmes

 

 

Deadly Pathogens as Bioweapons

"I would say this Canadian 'contribution' might likely be counter-productive."
"I think the Chinese activities ... are highly suspicious, in terms of exploring [at least] those viruses as BW [biological warefare] agents."
Dany Shoham, biological, chemical warfare expert, Bar-Ilan University, Israel

"This is not warfare, per se."
"But what it's doing is leveraging the capability to act as global saviour, which then creates various levels of macro- and micro-economic and bio-power dependencies."
James Giordano, neurology professor, Georgetown University

File photo, Associated Press

Dr. Giordano is also senior fellow in biowarfare at the U.S. Special Operations Command. He views China's great interest leading it to invest in bioscience with its more casual ethics surrounding gene-editing and allied cutting-edge technology -- and with particular attention to the close alliance resulting in integration between the government of the People's Republic and its academia lead to questions and suspicions that much of the world shares relating to the weaponization of pathogens and the existence of biological warfare programs.

China, as China always does, denies it has any interest whatever in a state agency for biological weaponry. As with all other similar statements relating to any number of issues where China is suspected of nefarious actions benefiting it and discrediting it at the same time, while it takes advantage of other nations' vulnerabilities to indulge in scientific, industrial and political espionage to a disbelieving world audience.

China, thus vehemently denies that it is involved in producing germ weapons. Scientists from Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory, as a gesture of scientific sharing, in March sent along samples of the henipavirus family and Ebola. As far as Canadian officials are concerned the shipment represents public-health research support on a global basis. Even though the lab scientists regard Nipah virus, part of the henipavirus family, to be a lethal potential bioweapon.



The shipment of the virus samples to China was revealed by a strange event at the National Microbiology Laboratory last month when it was revealed that there is an RCMP investigation underway. The lab authority dismissed a top scientist of Chinese origins at the lab located in Winnipeg, at the same time dismissing her husband who also worked at the lab as a scientist, and a number of Chinese students working at the lab.

Dr. Giordano, co-head of Georgetown University's Brain Science and Global Law and Policy Program focuses on the potential for an offensive agent or modified germ in the hands of proxies released into the public arena, and China stepping forward as the only source holding the treatment or vaccine. Public Health Agency of Canada, asked to comment on these contentious suspicions, responded that the agency "continues to look into the administrative matter".

Researchers work in the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Man., where the ZMapp antibody “cocktail” was created to fight Ebola.   Handout

Xiangguo Qiu, a highly regarded NML scientist, had been escorted out of the lab along with members of her research team while the agency investigated an "administrative issue", at the same time bringing in the RCMP to investigate a possible policy breach.  Everything is very secretive, and nothing has been divulged that might explain the highly unusual situation. China is a signatory to the Biological Weapons Convention and has been since 1984.

The U.S. State Department has publicly revealed their belief that China is in possession of offensive biological agents. But then, the fact is that many countries do, as part of their research, including for military investigations, the U.S. being no exception. The Federation of American Scientists contend that China is "commonly considered to have an active biological warfare program". China, stated an official with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defence, is the world leader in toxin "threats".

Dr. Shoham of Bar Ilan's Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, asserted in a 2015 academic paper that over 40 Chinese facilities are involved in the production of bioweapons. Dr. Shoham claims that Ebola cells form part of China's biowarfare arsenal. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention classify Ebola as a "category A" bioterrorism agent; that it could be transmitted readily from person to person, resulting in high death rates and "might cause panic".

According to figures released by the World Health Organization, Nipah, first seen in 1998 in Malaysia, caused a series of outbreaks across east and south Asia, resulting in death rates over 50 percent, and as high as 100 percent. Nipah has no known treatment or vaccine.

Dr. Xiangguo Qiu is seen in an undated screengrab from a CBC segment at the National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg. (CBC)

Paleo Pathogens in the Russian Arctic

"Anthrax spores can stay alive in the permafrost for up to 2,500 years. That's scary given the thawing of animal burial grounds from the 19th Century."
"When they are taken out of the permafrost and put into our temperatures, they revive."
"If the area of these emissions overlaps with the burials of animals or humans who died from diseases in previous centuries, these spores and pathogens could spread over a huge area."
"It would be a disaster not just for the Arctic. The catastrophe could exceed Chernobyl."
Biologist Boris Kershengolts, Yakutsk, Russia

A man is surrounded by dogs as he walks on the main street of the settlement of Oy, some 70 km south of Yakutsk, with the air temperature at about minus 41 degrees Celsius, on November 27, 2018. (Photo by Mladen ANTONOV / AFP)

An empty lot situated in the center of Yakutsk, in the Russian Arctic, was slated for a construction site when it occurred to authorities that anthrax spores preserved in permafrost -- permanently frozen soil, buried there with cattle and other animals in a past age could conceivably be released and become active disease threats to the population. Specialists concluded that it would be safe to build a skate park on the lot. It was a lot that at one time held a laboratory for the production of an anthrax serum.

Which knowledge served to raise additional questions relating to the ancient disease known to be present within the permafrost. The permafrost that has been undergoing change, gradually melting as Climate Change progresses. A situation which inevitably led to the further train of speculative thought, linking the spectre of global warming to the potential threat of the sleeping spores of a known and fearful lethal disease being reactivated.

Yakutsk residents cross a field that some have claimed was a cattle burial ground, although the authorities have said it was a laboratory  Credit: Maria Turchenkova/For The Telegraph

Yakutsk is beginning to experience environmental warming as the coldest city on Earth, whose winter temperatures have been known to plummet below -60C. That warming could conceivably herald the destruction of infrastructure built on the permafrost and becoming increasingly destabilized, the dormant disease being revived eventually not beyond the realm of possibility. This potential is coinciding with the arrival of more people manning new military bases, along with oil and gas facilities.

Vladimir Putin announced last week at an Arctic forum in St.Petersburg that a new Arctic development strategy was being carried forward, promising to increase investment in tax breaks and subsidized ice-breaker escorts through the Northeast Passage. Russia's geography is vast, the largest land mass in the world of any nation on Earth. Of that land mass, two-thirds of Russian territory is comprised of permafrost -- virtually the entire region of Yakutia, where the permafrost depth can be measured hundreds of feet in depth.

Vladimir Nikolaev and Klim Kirensky examine permafrost in the tunnels of the underground laboratory at the Melnikov Permafrost Institute in Yakutsk Credit: Maria Turchenkova/For The Telegraph

The active top layer of permafrost comprised of the top few feet that each yea thaws and refreezes, is now entering its thawing stage earlier, and to a greater depth. The shrinkage in central Yakutia measures one to 5 centimetres annually, and to a greater amount in urban areas, according to the Melnikov Permafrost Institute. Since 1955 precipitation has increased 70 percent throughout Yakutia which thickens the blanket of snow insulating the ground from the cold air, serving to exacerbate the thaw situation.

Foundations in Yakutsk are growing increasingly unsteady on their 8- to 12-metre stilts driven through the top layer of permafrost to the more stable permafrost beneath; many building walls are visibly cracking from destabilization. Thousands of oil and gas pipelines break in Russia, as a result of thawing permafrost. And that thaw has led to at least one disease epidemic where the "Siberian plague" known to ravage livestock and people in previous centuries has returned.

Valentin Sorov stands near the frozen Lena River below a house three feet from the bank, which is eroding more quickly due to thawing permafrost and increased precipitation Credit: Maria Turchenkova/For The Telegraph

Anthrax typically infects animals through plants or water they consume containing naturally-occurring bacteria in the soil which has led to periodic outbreaks of anthrax throughout history. By breathing, drinking, eating or coming into contact with the spores, or becoming infected through an open cut, people often develop blisters with a black centre. Should vomiting and bloody diarrhea result and not be treated in a timely manner with antibiotics those complications can become deadly.

In 2015, an unusual warming spurt of up to 35 C took place in the Arctic region of Yamal, when an estimated two thousand reindeer died and 96 people were hospitalized, while a 12-year-old boy died after eating infected raw venison. According to experts, the "appearance of anthrax was stimulated by the activation of 'old' infection sites following anomalously high air temperature and the thawing of the sites to a depth beyond normal levels." It is feasible for anthrax spores to lie dormant underground and when temperatures warm to 15 C, conditions for their reproduction are created.

Researchers have in addition discovered smallpox DNA fragments on bodies in the Russian permafrost and RNA from 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, in Alaska. The concern also is that those people involved in Yaktia's woolly mammoth tusk trade could pick up "paleo-pathogens" -- prehistoric diseases humans may never have encountered -- after the discovery of live bacteria in mammoth remains frozen for 20,000 years.

An explorer stands near a newly formed crater on the Yamal Peninsula