Pitiful probe has yet to solve mystery of how outbreak began
The WHO investigation into the origins of the virus is flawed because China set its terms of reference, writes
IN January last year, the Chinese leader Xi Jinping agreed that the World Health Organisation (WHO) could send international experts to visit China as soon as possible to work with his own country’s counterparts on increasing understanding about the outbreak of Covid-19.
A year later, China was still haggling with the WHO about arrangements for the scientists’ visit. In effect, this meant that the terms of reference for the investigation ended up being set by the Chinese Communist Party, which also exercised a de facto veto over the investigation’s membership.
To say the least, this did not augur well for the independence of what China was now referring to as a joint WHO-China investigation. Last week, the WHO announced its preliminary findings.
The Covid-19 pandemic that erupted in Wuhan is the single greatest health catastrophe to have hit humanity in a century, but we still have no idea how the virus first emerged in central China.
According to China, the WHO, and many academic virologists, the origins of this viral pandemic are to be found in nature. This happened, they believe, as a result of a zoonotic event, one in which the virus jumped the species barrier from animals to humans; either directly from bats to humans, or indirectly from bats to an intermediate species and then on to humans.
The previous two coronavirus epidemics this century, SARS and MERS, resulted from indirect transmission via an intermediate species. But there is no evidence that this is what happened with Covid-19. Indeed, last May, Chinese authorities had eliminated the Wuhan seafood market as the location where the virus jumped to humans.
The intermediate species for SARS and MERS (civet cats and camels, respectively) were identified in four and 10 months following the first case of human infection. A year after the first case of SARS CoV-2 was diagnosed in humans, no intermediate species candidate has yet been identified. If any such evidence had emerged during the last 12 months, no matter how slight, China would undoubtedly be shouting it from the rooftops.
Three coronavirus epidemics in two decades represents a worrying trend. We need to find out what lies at the root of this epidemic because, as most experts now agree, this will not be the last viral spillover event to affect humanity. The next one could be even worse.
There is another, even more disturbing hypothesis regarding the origins of this virus. This suggests that it escaped from a biolab in Wuhan, probably by accident. When first mooted, this lab escape suggestion was derided as a conspiracy theory. However, more recently it has gained credibility, at least as something that should be thoroughly investigated.
Laboratory-acquired infections by those working on airborne transmissible pathogens such as SARS CoV-2 are a well-documented biolab hazard. So, is there a credible risk of someone walking out of a biolab with an infection and unwittingly infecting others? Yes, there is. How do we know this? Because it has already happened in a number of countries; most notably in 2004, in China.
In two separate incidents, laboratory workers in Beijing’s National Institute of Virology new P3 laboratory were exposed to SARS coronaviruses and became infected. When they left the biolab, they infected many others. There followed a series of infections and one death before the outbreak was brought under control. In the wake of the incident, the WHO issued a statement: “China’s latest SARS outbreak has been contained, but biosafety concerns remain.”
Other concerns about the operational safety of Chinese biosecurity laboratories have continued to surface. The Washington Post reported recently that US diplomats voiced similar worries about the P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, following visits there. In particular, the diplomats were worried that “the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic”. Those prophetic words were written in 2018. Researchers from the South China University of Technology also addressed “the possible origins of 2019nCoV coronavirus” and published their analysis online in February 2020. It was critical, they said, “to study where the pathogen came from and how it passed on to humans”.
The Chinese academics came to the explosive conclusion that “the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan”. Their paper did not last long online before the Communist Party’s censors deleted it.
When the virus first emerged in Wuhan in December 2019, one of China’s foremost virologists, Shi Zhengli, became centrally involved. The so-called Bat Woman of Wuhan had spent most of her professional life chasing the source of coronavirus pathogens over 1,500km away in South China, so she was puzzled to see that it had emerged in Wuhan.
So where did the coronavirus pathogens come from?
In a later interview, she told Scientific American that a shocking thought had struck her: “Could they have come from our lab?”
Peter Daszak, a US-based British scientist, has worked closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology for over a decade on bat research, including experiments to make the virus more transmissible.
Months ago, he said that “the idea that this virus escaped from a lab is just pure baloney”. He claims that these are little more than conspiracy theories which have resulted in “political posturing against China”.
Dismissing a legitimate line of enquiry even before the investigation had begun should have disbarred Dr Daszak from membership of the WHO investigation team. His presence on it represents a serious conflict of interest.
Interviewed on Sky News last week, Dr Daszak dismissed out of hand any idea that the investigation team could have been manipulated by the Chinese authorities. This flies in the face of other reports from the few Western journalists still allowed to report from China.
It was no surprise, then, that the WHO investigation team announced last week it was “extremely unlikely” the virus leaked from a lab, and they would not be investigating the issue any further.
In recent months, China has promoted the idea that the virus had multiple origins in different locations around the world and had come into China in frozen food packages.
There is no credible scientific evidence to support this ‘multiple origins’ theory, yet Dr Daszak explained that the WHO investigation will now begin to focus on frozen food supply chains as the source of the virus.
Based on last week’s press reports, the WHO investigation will fall pitifully short of the open, independent, forensic enquiry that the world deserves.
This flawed WHO investigation offers an opportunity for US President Joe Biden to reassert America’s leadership role in the post-pandemic world. Mr Biden should instigate a Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the origins of the virus.
It would be a fitting way to remember the millions who have suffered or died in this pandemic. It might also help prepare us for what many experts believe to be the inevitability of the next pandemic.
‘Concerns about Chinese biolabs have continued to surface’