1 report, 4 theories: Scientists mull clues on virus’ origin
GENEVA >> A team of international and Chinese scientists is poised to report on its joint search for the origins of the coronavirus that sparked a pandemic after it was first detected in China over a year ago — with four theories being considered, and one the clear frontrunner, according to experts.
The lengthy report is being published after months of wrangling, notably between U.S. and Chinese governments, over how the outbreak emerged, while scientists try to keep their focus on a so-far fruitless search for the origin of a microbe that has killed over 2.7 million people and stifled economies worldwide.
It wasn’t immediately clear when the report will be released after its publication was delayed earlier this month. By many accounts, the report could offer few concrete answers, and may raise further questions.
It will offer a first glance in writing from 10 international epidemiologists, data scientists, veterinary, lab and food safety experts who visited China and the city of Wuhan — where a market was seen as the initial epicenter — earlier this year to work with Chinese counterparts who pulled up the bulk of early data.
Critics have raised questions about the objectivity of the team, insisting that China’s government had a pivotal say over its composition. Defenders of the World Health Organization, which assembled the team, say it can’t simply parachute in experts to tell a country what to do — let alone one as powerful as China.
“I expect that this report will only be a first step into investigating the origins of the virus and that the WHO secretariat will probably say this,” said Matthew Kavanagh, director of Georgetown University’s Global Health Policy and Governance Initiative at the O’Neill Institute. “And I expect some to criticize this as insufficient. I think it is key to keep in mind that WHO has very limited powers.”
The Wuhan trip is billed as Phase 1 in a vast undertaking to flesh out the origins of the virus.
The WHO has bristled at depictions of the mission as an “investigation” — saying that smacks of an invasive forensic probe that wasn’t called for under the resolution adopted unanimously by the agency’s member states in May that paved the way for the collaboration. The WHO and China later ironed out the ground rules.
Team member Vladimir Dedkov, an epidemiologist and deputy director of research at the St. Petersburg Pasteur Institute in Russia, summarized the four main leads first laid out at a marathon news conference in China last month about the suspected origins of the first infection in humans. They were, in order of likelihood: from a bat through an intermediary animal; straight from a bat; via contaminated frozen food products; from a leak from a laboratory like the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Officials in China, as well as Chinese team leader Liang Wannian, have promoted the third theory — the cold-chain one — while the U.S. administration under President Donald Trump played up the fourth one, of the lab leak. But Dedkov said those two hypothesis were far down the list of likely sources.
He suggested frozen products on which the virus was found were most likely contaminated by infected people. An infected person also likely brought and spread the virus at the Wuhan market associated with the outbreak, where some of the contaminated products were later found.
“In general, all the conditions for the spread of infection were present at this market,” Dedkov said in an interview. “Therefore, most likely, there was a mass infection of people who were connected by location.”
“At this point, there are no facts suggesting that there was a leak” from a lab, Dedkov said. “If suddenly scientific facts appear from somewhere, then accordingly, the priority of the version will change. But, at this particular moment, no.”
An updated company analysis of the coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford showed that the two-shot regimen was robustly effective — 76% at preventing symptomatic illness — according to a news release from the drugmaker late Wednesday.
The finding, only slightly lower than results announced days earlier, underscores that the vaccine being widely used by many countries appears to be a powerful tool to help end the pandemic. No severe cases of illness were reported in study volunteers who received the vaccine. Among people 65 and older, the vaccine was 85% effective, the company reported.
The new data may not resolve challenges that the vaccine and the company face in the United States, because repeated missteps have sown confusion and distrust that may result in slower and closer scrutiny of the data.
AstraZeneca and Oxford’s announcement Monday that their vaccine was 79% effective in a 32,000-person trial in the United States buoyed the company’s stock price and impressed government officials.
The fraught story of the vaccine then took a dramatic turn when an independent data-monitoring committee took the highly unusual step of writing late Monday to company and government officials, airing concerns.
The expert physicians, biostatisticians and ethicists on the Data and Safety Monitoring Board that oversee trials have an inside view of the research and are charged with maintaining patient safety and scientific validity. Their communications with companies typically take place in private.