Wuhan Institute of Virology Hypothesis 'Politicized'

"Peter Daszak is in many ways typical of the international world of disease prevention. As the president of EcoHealth Alliance, Daszak has spent millions of dollars of grant money from the National Institutes of Health in recent years. His organization's special focus is on preventing the outbreak of emerging diseases, such as coronaviruses. He was deeply involved with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) because his organization had funded bat coronavirus research that lab was doing when the COVID-19 outbreak occurred in late 2019."

"Daszak has been a good friend to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Chinese Communist government that runs it for years. His role in trying to discredit the lab leak theory has come under scrutiny amid a pronounced shift in media attention towards the theory and amid revelations about Daszak's own ties to the Institute."

"Early in the pandemic, Daszak was behind the creation of an open letter, signed by several scientists, which squarely rejected the suggestion that a lab accident at the WIV may have released the virus into the city of Wuhan. Daszak did not disclose his conflict of interest when signing the letter, which would receive significant coverage in news reports purporting to debunk the lab leak theory."

Peter Schweizer, President, Governmental Accountability Institute, U.S.

Shi Zhengli ('Batwoman' center) and Peter Daszak (far right). (Emerging Viruses Group)

"We will not accept such an origins-tracing plan as it in some aspects, disregards common sense and defies science."

"We hope the WHO would seriously review the considerations and suggestions made by Chinese experts and truly treat the origin tracing of the COVID-19 virus as a scientific matter, and get rid of political interference." 

"[China has always supported] scientific virus tracing [and wants to see the study extended to other countries and regions]. However, we are opposed to politicizing the tracing work."

Zeng Yixin, vice minister, National Health Commission, China

Zeng Yixin, vice minister of the National Health Commission, speaks at a news conference at the State Council Information Office, in Beijing, on July 22   Mark Schiefelbein, The Associated Press

"Without Chinese cooperation, WHO's hands are tied, international hands are tied, and our ability to identify the origins of the virus will be much reduced."

Mara Pillinger, senior associate, global health policy and governance, O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Georgetown

"We believe a lab leak is extremely unlikely and it is not necessary to invest more energy and efforts in this regard."

"[More animal studies should be conducted particularly in countries with bat populations]."

"In the next step, I think animal tracing should still be the priority direction. It is the most valuable field for our efforts."

Liang Wannian, Chinese team leader, WHO joint expert team

The World Health Organization's first investigative team arriving in China in February of this year was significantly hampered by the guidance and continual presence of Chinese authorities vetting their every move, informing them what they could and could not do, offering them limited opportunity to visit areas of concern in their investigation of the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing the global pandemic. Vital data that would have afforded the investigative team important information in their study was held back, so the conclusion reached was fairly predictable; no idea really how, where and why COVID emerged.

Unlikely, however, that it was the result of a laboratory accident where a pathogen under study at the Wuhan Institute of Virology somehow escaped to wreak havoc first in Wuhan then across the great wide world. On the team was a virology expert with direct ties to the Wuhan laboratory, and his influence certainly went far in convincing the other members of the WHO team that a laboratory 'escape' could not possibly have occurred.

Among the world's leading virology scientists much criticism of the report erupted, and by extension criticism of of the World Health Organization itself, leading its head, Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to speculate that there might be something to the lab escape theory after all, and that another, more extensive, in-depth scrutiny might be in order. He did, in fact, order such a second investigation, expressing the hope that Beijing would be fully co-operative and open to the venture.

But it was not to be. Mr.Zeng, China's vice minister of its National Health Commission together with Chinese experts urged the WHO, even as they poured cold water on any cooperation on China's part with a second investgation as to the origins of COVID, recommended an expansion of origin-tracing beyond China to encompass other countries. It has always been China's contention that the original infection was sourced elsewhere than China. 

Other countries, suggested Liang Wannian, the Chinese team leader on the joint expert team of the WHO, had another brilliant idea, that further animal studies be undertaken in countries with their own bat populations so that if evidence was unearthed incriminating other countries they needed to explore in depth whether any of them could have experienced a laboratory leak leading to the global pandemic. Back to square zero with Beijing.

Because Beijing claims that the issue has been 'politicized', the WHO's intention to study the origins of the coronavirus where it began, investigating audits of laboratories and markets in Wuhan, with the express aid of Chinese authorities simply isn't going to occur. The WHO's plan of action having listed the hypothesis of a violation of laboratory protocols in China was a direct assault on the scientific integrity of Chinese science, and therefore 'political'.

 

Strange that, since in 2010, Shi Zhengli director of the Centre of Emerging Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and a bat expert, published a paper describing a scenario where infected rodents led to a deadly virus leaked from a Chinese lab. The paper's title was: "Hantavirus outbreak associated with laboratory rats in Yunnan, China," of an outbreak of hantavirus hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome at a college in Kunming as the result of a lab leak in 2003.

 

And Peter Daszak, renowned zoologist and molecular biologist in 2015 co-authored an article in the journal Nature titled, "Spillover and pandemic properties of zoonotic viruses with high host plasticity," where he wrote that zoonotic virus spillover from wildlife was "most frequent" in a number of settings and occupations, including "laboratory workers." He also warned that laboratories are one of the most dangerous settings for major spillover events. 

Peter Daszak (R), Thea Fischer (L) and other members of the World Health Organization team investigating the origins of the Covid-19 coronavirus, arrive at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan  on February 3, 2021.  HECTOR RETAMAL | AFP | Getty Images

Back, At The Beginning...

"This was a city of 15 million people that was in lockdown. It was strange, but we were told this was to make it easy for the Games participants to get around."

"[I got] very sick two days after we arrived, with fever, chills, vomiting, insomnia. On our flight to come home [at the end of October], 60 Canadian athletes on the flight were put in isolation [at the back of the plane] for the 12-hour flight. We were sick with symptoms ranging from coughs to diarrhea and in between."

"I was tested for various issues, but never for anything respiratory. A few weeks later, I offered to take an antibody test but was ignored."

Unidentified military source still serving in Canadian Armed Forces

Photo taken on Oct. 27, 2019 shows a view of the closing ceremony of the 7th CISM Military World Games in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province. (Photo: Xinhua)

"Given unanswered questions surrounding the origins of the pandemic, information involving the health of service members who participated in the 2019 Games could provide key evidence in understanding when COVID-19 first emerged."

U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher calling for U.S.investigation

 

"One-quarter of us got sick there and when we returned, some were bedridden for weeks. This made us potential vectors for the virus. The military did nothing."

"I was sick and others were too with Wuhan symptoms. ...I was eventually given a swab test, which measures only recent exposure, and told to carry on."

Second unidentified military source serving in Canadian Armed Forces

 

"We are not aware of any CAF members or civilians becoming sick at the Games or after they returned. There have not been any COVID-19 cases identified amongst this group."

"As their stay in Wuhan was well before [the] COVID-19 pandemic was declared and before anyone was aware of the virus, members were not tested upon their return. Testing for COVID-19 was not available in Canada prior to January 2020."

"Once we were aware of potential risks, the CAF and Department of National Defence took immediate precautionary measures to avoid any illness or additional exposure to CAF members related to the novel coronavirus."

Julia Scott, communications adviser, Canadian Forces Health Services public affairs department

The story of the novel coronavirus pandemic keeps deepening, widening, drawing in more studies, becoming more complicated with each passing day. The SARS-CoV-2  virus causing COVID itself is constantly mutating, the focus of health authorities worldwide as breakouts occur and new variants are identified -- along with mutations of variants of concern piggy-backing on variants already tagged as more infectious than the original. As for the original, the role that China played in alerting the world is also questioned and the questions become louder and more persistent day by day.

 

In the United States lawmakers this week called for an investigation into the possibility that the Military World Games that took place in Wuhan, China in October of 2019 turned out to be the first superspreader event that handed the globe a pandemic. Suspicions that officials involved in the arrangements of the event should have been alerted of something amiss when once arrived, the city appeared empty of its population, described by some Game participants as a veritable 'ghost town'. By December of 2019, several months following the Games, the world was aware of a new virus in circulation.

Some members of the Canadian Armed Forces who had taken part in the Games and returned with symptoms linked to COVID feel that military officials failed them, by appearing to ignore both their ill-health symptoms and their complaints involving Wuhan. About 180 military athletes and support personnel from Canada attended the Games, out of a total figure of 9,000 athletes representing 100 countries. China disclosed the presence of a new respiratory virus to the world around the end of December.

Two current members of the Canadian Armed Forces claim the military bureaucracy chose to ignore their symptoms, suggesting Beijing had repressed news of a virus outbreak months in advance of finally admitting the presence of a mysterious new virus that was killing people in Wuhan. One of the military officers who revealed impressions of what he had experienced in Wuhan in October of 2019, spoke of his family members becoming ill, and of his own worsening symptoms; fatigue, nosebleeds, fever and breathing pain.

 

Armed Forces men’s soccer team members salute at the start of a preliminary round match with Qatar for the Council of International Sports for Military 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan, China, Oct. 16, 2019.  US Dept. of Defense

 

According to The Washington Post, American military leaders at the time dismissed the idea or claimed they had no idea of the situation where U.S. military participants in the Games became ill with COVID-centric symptoms. On January 22, 2020 Canadian servicemen who had taken part in the Wuhan Games received a letter from the Surgeon General that advised it was "not aware of any COVID-19 illness among Games participants"; that "Your individual risk of having been exposed to 2019-nCoV during temporary duty in Wuhan City ... is negligible."

"How did they know? I would have thought the intelligence of medical intelligence community would have tested and followed up on this, but this didn't happen. Athletes were coming back sick from countries, with ongoing symptoms. In Europe, athletes were tested and French, Italian and six Spaniards returned and were positively identified in 2019-20 as having the virus", stated one of the Canadian Forces officers.

Opening Ceremonies - The U.S. Armed Forces team marches during opening ceremonies for the 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan, China, Oct. 18, 2019. Teams from more than 100 countries will compete in dozens of sporting events through Oct. 28.  US Dept.of Defense

And then there is this: "Chinese official who has a history of attacking the United States online has lent a voice to a conspiracy theory that blames American soldiers for bringing COVID-19 to China, though the science does not support that narrative."

"According to the unfounded accusation, which reports say has been widely shared on the popular Chinese social media platform Weibo, the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 was introduced to China when 300 US military members arrived in the Wuhan region for the Military World Games in mid-October and infected the local population. None of the servicemembers who made the trip have tested positive for the virus."

"The rumors seemed to begin when Chinese respiratory specialist Zhong Nanshan stated at a February press conference that “though the COVID-19 was first discovered in China, it does not mean that it originated from China,” planting the seeds of doubt."

"On Thursday (March 12), Zhao Lijian, the spokesperson of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, took to Twitter, a social platform banned in China, to ask, “When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!"

March 13, 2020, Lisa Winter, The Scientist

Canada's Prime Minister's Unreciprocated Love Affair With China

"Threats, censorship and intimidation will continue as long as companies, not-for-profits academia, politicians, media and other institutions with vested interests are fearful of angering Beijing."

"Beijing is effectively exporting their authoritarianism overseas."

"Dissidents are not safe. Not at work, not in their homes, not in civil societies, and not in Canada."

"[There is a] persistent lack of knowledge and understanding of these networks of influence within Canadian institutions, politics and society [which permits Chinese infiltration to influence Canada to go under the radar]."

Cherie Wong, executive director, Alliance Canada Hong Kong 

"[China has also expanded its influence through academia, particularly in the area of research and development, often through] ludicrous funding opportunities that trap academics and researchers into long-term coercive relationships [funded by foreign actors]."

"Inadequate federal regulations [have allowed such partnerships to continue]."

"Beijing aims to influence the next generation of technologies to disrupt, dominate, and silence democratic nations, making it clear they do not intend to follow the international order or be a fair and transparent global partner."

Report, Alliance Canada Hong Kong

Security personnel keep watch outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology during the visit by the World Health Organization (WHO) team tasked with investigating the origins of COVID-19, in Wuhan, Hubei province, China on Feb. 3, 2021. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)

 

The most recent egregious Canada-China interaction has a sinister air of confidence, marked top secret in a country whose prime minister once infamously and naively stated his admiration for the Chinese Communist Party, able to 'turn on a dime'. Justin Trudeau recalls fondly when as a child he accompanied his father, then-Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau to China, opening Canada up to the CCP, just as he had taken the current prime minister Justin Trudeau in those long-ago days to Cuba to meet with 'Uncle Castro' for whom he long retained a fondness.

As prime minister, Justin Trudeau makes decisions that impact the entire country. As he did, when the novel coronavirus escaped China's borders to make deadly inroads globally, by making the decision that Canada would seek a vaccine in collaboration with a Chinese pharmaceutical company, CanSino, whose CEO and founder had attended a Canadian university and worked for a Canadian pharmaceutical enterprise before returning to China.

Prime Minister Trudeau in tandem with the National Research Council underwrote CanSino Biologics by providing it with Canadian intellectual property on which to base its vaccine for Ebola and SARS-CoV-2. Under the agreement reached with CanSino, Canadian technology would be used as a scaffold on which to build a successful COVID vaccine which was meant to be tested at Dalhousie University, with the NRC helping to produce it in Canada if successful. Beijing decided,  however, to block the vaccine from being shipped to Canada.

Leaving Canada in a vacuum of vaccine acquisition, since no contracts had been signed with reliable pharmaceutical companies capable of producing vaccines. Scrambling, in a late start to acquire vaccines, Canada was late in their use since it was back-of-the-line in contracting for doses to inoculate Canadians against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. But there is far, far more to the Canada-China 'collaboration'. A connection between Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, both high-security labs involved in research with highly lethal pathogens.

 

The head scientist at Winnipeg's Vaccine Development and Antiviral Therapies section in the Special Pathogens Program lab was Xiangguo Qiu, a Chinese virologist. In July of 2019, she and her husband Keding Cheng, as well as several of her Chinese students were escorted out of the lab by the RCMP. No explanation was given while officials stated only that a procedural investigation was underway. There were rumours in circulation of unauthorized shipment of deadly viruses from the laboratory to China; otherwise known as purloined intellectual property.

The two top scientists were eventually fired when the Canadian Security Intelligence Service called for revocation on national security grounds of their security clearance. Another Chinese scientist, Feihu Yan involved in the Winnipeg lab as a researcher with the Chinese military's Academy of Military Medical Sciences, made heads swivel. Andy Ellis, formerly with CSIS noted it was "madness" for the Public Health Agency of Canada, responsible for the Winnipeg laboratory, to cooperate with the People's Liberation Army.

"It is ill-advised. It is the top lab in Canada. It is just incredible naivete on their part", he emphasized. The Public Health Agency of Canada refuses to disclose anything relating to the firing of the two Chinese scientists much less about the lab research or the relationship of the National Microbiology Laboratory with the Wuhan Virology Laboratory, much less the third skeleton in the closet, the involvement of the Chinese military.

In this 2017 file photo, Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli works with other researchers in a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The so-called Wuhan lab-leak theory postulates that researchers may have been studying or even modifying such viruses to better understand them, and that a lab accident allowed the virus to escape. (Associated Press)

New life has lately been breathed into the theory of the Wuhan Laboratory studying bat viruses, its close geographical proximity to the fresh wild animal market in Wuhan where suspicion was that the strange new pneumonia-causing virus that had surfaced in Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, later identified as a novel coronavirus that moved swiftly to infect large swaths of people in Wuhan, in China, and gradually but quickly the rest of the world, emerged. And COVID-19 was born. Was it a rare virus that crossed the species barrier from animal to human? Or a lab-escapee?

 

Prominent scientists are now insisting that the theory is no longer in the realm of conspiracy, that it is a feasible explanation for the presence of a new and deadly SARS virus. That the Wuhan Virology Laboratory was insufficiently secure and a virus that had been synthesized in the laboratory had somehow escaped, an escape with horrendous consequences -- and that Beijing was irresponsible in trying to hide its noxious presence and in so doing introduced a global threat to human existence.

 

The problem for Canada now, is its links with the laboratory and its obviously compromised position. While U.S. President Biden has authorized a deep investigation of the matter which Beijing most certainly will not cooperate with, in permitting access to the laboratory, to the market confines, to witnesses, to its scientists, to the records that it refused the WHO investigative team access to, the truth will somehow emerge, and Canada's role in the disaster will also emerge, damning its reputation, thanks to a prime minister with ambitions for a robust trade agreement with Beijing and a lack of common sense.

Republicans, including former president Donald Trump, have promoted the theory that the virus emerged from the Wuhan lab rather than naturally through human contact with an infected animal. While initially dismissed by some as a conspiracy theory, now credible scientists are saying a proper investigation needs to be done. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)

 

 

There Are Strange Things Done In The Midnight Sun

Peter Daszak (right), Thea Fischer (left), and other members of the WHO team investigating the origins of covid-19 arrive at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China's central Hubei province.

 

"We would ask that we separate the science from the politics, and let us get on with finding the answers that we need in a proper, positive atmosphere."

"This whole process is being poisoned by politics."

WHO emergencies chief Michael Ryan 

 

"The technical team will prepare a proposal for the next studies that will need to be carried out and will present that to the director-general."

"He will then work with member states about the next steps. There is no timeline."

WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib

 

"[The first phase of the WHO expert panel study was] insufficient and inconclusive. There is a need for a] timely, transparent, evidence-based and expert-led Phase 2 study, including in the People's Republic of China."

"[There is a need for access for independent experts to] complete, original data and samples [relevant to the source of the virus and early stages of the outbreak]."

"We appreciate the WHO's stated commitment to move forward with Phase 2 of the COVID-19 origins study, and look forward to an update from Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus."

U.S. Diplomatic Mission, Geneva 

Workers in protective gear carry a bag containing a giant salamander that was reported to have escaped from the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province, Monday, Jan. 27, 2020. (Chinatopix via AP)

When the mysterious appearance of a strange pneumonia was discovered in patients admitted to hospitals in Wuhan, China in December of 2019, and soon afterward the virus began spreading outside China's borders, Beijing took exception to the virus, identified as a new coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2 being familiarly referred to as the 'Wuhan virus', until the World Health Organization gave it the pandemic name it is now known by, COVID-19.

 

And now that world powers like the United States and Great Britain are leading a drive for a full and deep investigation to discover the origins of the virus causing COVID-19, Beijing continues to deny that suspicions harboured by many in the West that the closed high-security Wuhan Virology Institute laboratory might possibly have loosed the virus accidentally, giving the virus its villainous start on its global predation. Chinese authorities found it much more palatable to insist that the Huanan wet market was a likelier source of the zoonotic when the pathogen made its leap from animal to human.

A growing clamour of voices calling for an independent, unbiased and unchaperoned-by-Chinese-authorities investigation take place to settle the question once and for all; whether the virus origins was a lab-held virus that made its escape or the leap of transmission between species. The WHO assembly was informed by a Chinese representative the official Chinese position that the "China part" of the origin-tracing study "has been completed". In other words: you want to study further, go right ahead but don't expect any cooperation from China. 

 

An interpreter made it clear as well that China was interested in seeing "a global origin-tracing cooperation" -- the translation of which is that China feels the hunt would be best carried out elsewhere than in China. Literally washing its hands of any further investigation, much less the thought that China would further lend itself to another such survey as the original WHO 'independent' investigation when the investigation team was comprised of more Chinese investigators than WHO investigators. 

 

And where the official presence of Chinese authorities at all interviews and site visits constrained a deep and useful investigation, topped off by China's refusal to allow the WHO investigators access to critical records. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian suggested on Wednesday that U.S. sites should be explored -- reflecting Chinese specious 'speculation' the coronavirus could have emerged there. Surely derisively. 

 

Wuhan, a central Chinese city of 11 million people, is where China's first-ever BSL-4-certified laboratory is located. This is a rare classification identifying laboratories meant to work with the world's most lethal pathogens. When it was opened in 2018, the Wuhan Institute of Virology campus was recognized as specializing in coronavirus studies, particularly bat coronaviruses which just happen to represent the likely origin of COVID-19. 

 

The Wuhan Institute is noted for its  unusual housing of the "most comprehensive inventory of sampled bat viruses in the world", according to a January investigation by New York magazine, considered the most rigorous journalistic probe into the COVID-19 potential lab origins. In addition, the lab is understood to engage in gain-of-function experiments, where researchers attempt to supercharge coronaviruses to infect lab mice or human cell samples. Gain-of-function is meant to discover methods of combating the emergence of new viruses from nature, but it is also "exactly the kind of experiment from which a SARS-2-like virus could have emerged", explains a scientific breakdown of COVID-129 origins by The Wire, an Indian news site.

Given these incriminating circumstances, how likely is it that a novel coronavirus linked to bats might have simply by coincidence begun infecting humans who just happened to be located within easy walking distance of a laboratory that incidentally is the world centre for studying highly infectious bat coronaviruses? As a plot of fictitious origins it is hardly believable, as a scenario of real-time circumstances, there is no competition for the actual location of the Virology laboratory escape.

With respect to circumstantial identification of source, American diplomats back in 2018, long before the emergence of the coronavirus causing COVID, visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology and afterward drafted a cable to Washington complete with a heads-up warning of a mishap waiting to happen. Their distinct impression was that the facility's safety and security standards were lax enough to risk sparking a pandemic. According to the Washington Post, which headed the story, "The new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory", read the cable.

Three years later, the revelation that a US. intelligence report that three workers at the Wuhan Institute were hospitalized "with symptoms consistent with both COVID19 and common seasonal illness", came out this week. Another very peculiar coincidence, this time bringing Canada into the narrative, when researcher Xiangguo Qiu, working at the high-security BSL-4 lab at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg was escorted from the facility along with her scientist husband and a Chinese student, all later fired, with no public explanation.

The two-week investigation by the World Health Organization scientific team of ten, joined by a team of 17 Chinese scientists in Wuhan conducted interviews under constant supervision. The researchers spent a mere few hours at the Virology lab where select documents were presented for their examination but no forensic examination of lab protocols was undertaken, only a few supervised meetings with laboratory staff who assured them the institute had witnessed "no disruptions or incidents" at the time of the emergence of COVID-19.

"The lab leak hypothesis has picked up more adherents as time passes and scientists fail to detect a bat or other animal infected with a virus that has covid’s signature genetics. By contrast, within a few months of the start of the 2003 SARS pandemic, scientists found the culprit coronavirus in animals sold in Chinese markets. But samples from 80,000 animals to date have failed to turn up a virus pointing to the origins of SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes covid."

"The virus’s ancestors originated in bats in southern China, 600 miles from Wuhan. But covid contains unusual mutations or sequences that made it ideal for infecting people, an issue explored in depth by journalist Nicholas Wade."

"Scientists from the Wuhan Institute have collected thousands of coronavirus specimens from bats and registered them in databases closed to inspection. Could one of those viruses have escaped, perhaps after a “gain of function” experiment that rendered it more dangerous?"

Arthur Allen, KHN

The World Community Has a Right to Know

Lab-leak theories centre on the Wuhan Institute of Virology   Reuters

"[Of the lab-leak theory]: That possibility certainly exists, and I am totally in favour of a full investigation of whether that could have happened."

"[I am] not convinced [the virus originated naturally]."

Dr.Anthony Fauci, U.S. President Biden's chief medical adviser   

 

"From day one China has been engaged in a massive cover-up."

"As the evidence for the lab-leak hypothesis grows, we should be demanding the full investigation of all origin hypotheses that's required."

Jamie Metzl, a fellow at the Washington-based Atlantic Council 

 

"We do need to be a bit patient but we also need to be diplomatic."

"We can't do this without support from China. It needs to be a no-blame environment."

Prof Dale Fisher, Singapore's National University Hospital 

"I've read it, [report released by the Washington Post calling into question when and how the SARS-CoV-2 virus emerged] it's a complete lie."

"Those claims are groundless. The lab has not been aware of this situation, and I don't even know where such information came from."

Yuan Zhiming, director, Wuhan National Biosafety Lab, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Wuhan, China

The story in the Wall Street Journal claims that three laboratory workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill in November of 2019, and were admitted to hospital for treatment. A month later, China advised the World Health Organization of the sudden appearance of a zoonotic, a virus transmitted from animal to human, and that authorities in China felt confident the virus had erupted in a fresh food market where wild animals were sold and pangolins were the suspected source.

The U.S. intelligence report cited by the paper had originally been the product of an investigation authorized by then-President Donald Trump who stated  his determination to get to the bottom of the matter that he suspected was Beijing's lack of openness in alerting the world community of the presence of a galloping new virus with unknown properties but a surprising level of lethality, initially presenting as a new kind of pneumonia. 

It was the newspaper's contention and possible purpose of re-visiting the investigative report and coming away with greater details, that what it revealed could conceivably bring support to the evidence already in question, leading to a broader and deeper investigation into what many in the scientific community suspect -- and many others object to -- that the COVID-19 virus could have been a lab escapee.

What is undeniable unless new information arises, is that the first cases of a strange new pneumonia were being reported toward the end of December 2019 in the central Chinese city of Wuhan where coincidentally two high-security laboratories for the study of viruses were located. One laboratory had undertaken studies of viruses collected from bats in caves and theorized that the bats had infected pangolins and the pangolins carried the virus with them when they were trapped for sale at the live animal market in Wuhan.

 

Although rumours have circulated widely that the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19 was not a zoonotic that naturally occurred, infecting people who had come in contact with a vector at the Wuhan market, but rather a laboratory-produced virus and that inept, insecure methods led to its escape, China has steadfastly denied any such allegations. Claiming instead that the lab theory was unproven and nonsensical and simply represented U.S. paranoia.

 

Instead Chinese authorities point to the possibility that the virus may very well not have originated in China, or Wuhan, at all, and was imported with frozen food from some other geographic location. Wildlife trading too was cited as a source, as well as a circulating virus that had emerged elsewhere and found its way to China by some unsuspected means. China's foreign ministry rejected the claim that three lab workers had been hospitalized, characterizing it as a lie.

 

The World Health Organization, which had sent an independent team of researchers to Wuhan months ago to undertake a detailed investigation, now entertains thought of another investigation, this time perhaps without Chinese authorities' interference, although without Beijing's approval for yet another group of scientists arriving in Wuhan there can be no follow-up of the original which declared its joint opinion that no lab escape of a virus was a likely explanation for the pandemic.

 

That opinion was reached despite that there were no unescorted interviews permitted where the investigators could privately, without interference and the presence of Chinese authorities, closely question someone who might have information critical to the investigation, nor were the investigators permitted to see collected data directly relevant to the more immediate Chinese investigation of the market where purportedly the outbreak was traced to.

 

According to Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman for WHO, the organization's technical teams were currently making decisions on whether to proceed further and if so, how. Further study was obviously required into the role of animal markets, as well as the hypothesis of a lab leak. The issue, after all, is that of a lethal, minuscule, unseen pathogen seeking out new hosts, invading body cells and replicating wildly. A virus that has in the space of a year-and-a-half killed three and a half million people worldwide.  

Knowing its true origins could help medical science more fully understand the nature of the pathogen and how best to control it. It could also lead to techniques of detection and deterrence that could help avoid future such global pandemics. As well as teach both the global medical community and governments how best to anticipate new and perhaps even more deadly invasions of viruses from wild animal to humanity.

 

The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was linked to early Covid cases   Getty Images

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

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.

 

 

Looking for Answers to COVID Derivation in China

"The new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high containment laboratory."

U.S. Diplomatic cable

"It's a fabulous piece of virology by the Chinese group and it's very impressive, but they haven't been thinking clearly about what they are doing."

"It's very worrying."

Simon Wain-Hobson, virologist, Paris Pasteur Institute

"[The Chinese government was responsible for the most] ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history."

"The deep commitment of the Chinese people to collective action in the face of this common threat [is beyond praiseworthy]."

World Health Organization report

"So it was apparent [that the investigation was marred by clear political tension]  and there were people from foreign affairs in China attending our meetings and so on."

"It was at times tense, but always very well mannered and good humoured."

"The group [WHO investigators] wasn't designed to go and do a forensic examination of lab practise in Wuhan, China]."

Dominic Dwyer, microbiologist, Austrian WHO investigative team

The WHO team investigating the origins of the novel coronavirus arrives at the heavily guarded Wuhan Institute of Virology in China in February. Photograph: Héctor Retamal/AFP/Getty Images

 

Much-needed answers to questions regarding the true provenance of the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19 remain elusive. China's initial identification of a wet market in Wuhan as the source of the novel coronavirus cross-species-infection from animal to human was proven to be untrustworthy. And as the virus flamed out of China to invade the world at large, the peculiar coincidence of a virology laboratory located in sneezing distance of where the first COVID cases were detected raised suspicions that all was not as revealed.

China's first BSL-4 laboratory, a classification representing facilities equipped to deal with dangerous pathogens, was located adjacent the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The laboratory had most recently been involved in research on coronaviruses and in particular on bat coronaviruses, the very type believed to be most closely related to the virus causing COVID-19. U.S. diplomats visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2018.

What they saw there persuaded them to send a cable to Washington with a warning about the lax standards at the facility and the risk it potentially posed of possibly becoming the future source of a pandemic. In January of 2021 the State Department claimed it had evidence staff at the Chinese institute were revealed to have symptoms now known to be those of  COVID-19, back in the fall of 2019.

This would not have been the first time that a high-security virology laboratory in China posed as a possible source of runaway globe-altering pathogens on the loose. The Harbin Veterinary Research Institute in 2013 had been accused of "appalling irresponsibility" when scientists there mixed avian and human influenza viruses in the creation of a new and potentially deadly hybrid. Dr.Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist in France warned that the lab might have created a virus with the potential to be the cause of between 500,000 and 100 million global deaths.

When a serious security breach took place at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada in July of 2019, Chinese researchers Xiangguo Qiu, her husband and a Chinese student were escorted from the Winnipeg facility by RCMP and questioned regarding a shipment of Ebola and henipavirus samples, both pathogens flown without adequate safeguards out of the laboratory to Wuhan. There has been silence ever since, no explanation for the event, but the suspicion lingers of scientific espionage.

 

The World Health Organization investigation team discussed the conclusions of its investigation at a press conference in Wuhan, China, on 9 February.   Credit: Kyodo News/Getty

Australia boldly insisted the world required a thorough probe into the origins of COVID-19. Beijing has since exacted a number of penalties on Australia, an important trading partner with China. Threats and attempts at forcing Australia to stand down have been numerous. Eventually the World Health Organization agreed to a more neutral version of the Australian proposal and dispatched a team of ten researchers to China for a two-week period. The team was assigned to conduct interviews and review reports, all under strict surveillance by Chines authorities.

The microbiologists at the Wuhan laboratory knew full well that Chinese authorities expect them to say little and certainly nothing incriminating. Beijing made a point of threatening any medical personnel at the beginning of the epidemic in Wuhan that their professional accreditation would be endangered if they failed to behave with proper circumspection. "If the officials had disclosed information about the epidemic earlier I think it would have been a lot better", ophthalmologist Li Wenliang stated.

Shortly afterward the young physician who had been interrogated over having alerted his professional peers to the presence of a strange new and deadly pneumonia-like virus that had entered hospitals, was dead himself from the lethal effects of having contracted COVID. Beijing was found to be funding research into COVID's origins and at the same time censoring results through a specialized task force. Scientists working on bat coronaviruses have had samples confiscated and orders were given to avoid speaking to the press.

Peter Daszak of a World Health Organization team rolls up a vendors layout map of Huanan Seafood market after signing on it as he prepares to leave his hotel for the airport at the end of their WHO mission to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)