Aussie expert defends Wuhan lab’s operation

Coronavirus emerged naturally, says virologist in debunking distortions

Virologist Danielle Anderson, the only foreign scientist said to have carried out research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s BSL-4 Lab, believes the novel coronavirus emerged from a natural source.

Anderson, who worked at the lab until November 2019, has largely refrained from commenting publicly on COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic. The virus that caused the disease likely “was a natural acquired infection at some point somewhere”, the Australian scientist said.

In what appeared to be an exclusive interview with Bloomberg published on Monday, Anderson talked about her experience in the Wuhan facility and said that half-truths and distorted information have obscured an accurate accounting of the lab’s functions and activities.

Anderson was one of a dozen experts appointed to an international task force in November to study the origins of the virus. She said she didn’t speak out sooner about her experience at the Wuhan lab out of fears for her safety. She received threats in the United States in early 2020 after she exposed false information about the pandemic posted online. Anderson said she filed a police report in response.

Anderson, who now works at the Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne, Australia, began to collaborate with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2016, when she was scientific director of the biosafety lab at Singapore’s Duke-NUS Medical School.

She was still working at the Wuhan lab every day when the virus now known as SARS-CoV-2 was, as believed by experts, beginning to spread at the end of 2019. She was in close proximity to many other scientists who worked at the institute.

“We went to dinners together, lunches, we saw each other outside of the lab,” Anderson said.

No one she knew was ill toward the end of 2019. In addition, Anderson said there was a procedure for reporting symptoms that correspond with the pathogens handled in high-risk containment labs. “If people were sick, I assume that I would have been sick — and I wasn’t,” she told Bloomberg. “I was tested for coronavirus in Singapore before I was vaccinated, and had never had it.”

Moreover, many of Anderson’s colleagues in Wuhan went to Singapore at the end of December 2019 for a gathering on the Nipah virus. There was no word of any illness sweeping the laboratory, she said.

Anderson found that speculation and accusations of the lab doing gainof-function research on the coronavirus and leaking the virus, by accident or not, was distorted in the media.

Gain-of-function research involves experimentation that may increase the transmissibility of a pathogen.

Anderson said there was no evidence such research occurred, and its likelihood is exceedingly slim. It’s extremely difficult to get authorization to create a virus in this way.

Strict protocols

Anderson was impressed by the Wuhan institute’s maximum biocontainment lab. She said the lab requires air, water and waste to be filtered and sterilized before it leaves the facility. There are strict protocols and requirements in place, and researchers have to undergo 45 hours of training to be certified to work independently in the lab.

According to Anderson, scientists at the Wuhan lab are required to demonstrate their knowledge of containment procedures and their competency in wearing air-pressurized suits; they must take both a chemical shower and a personal shower before they can leave the lab. Disinfection of the lab is conducted and monitored daily.

Anderson was so impressed with the safety protocol at the Wuhan lab that she implemented the measures in her own lab.

She believes that the virus is a natural occurrence. Because it took researchers almost a decade to pin down where in nature the SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, pathogen emerged, Anderson said she’s not surprised the “smoking gun” bat responsible for the COVID-19 outbreak hasn’t been discovered yet.

Shi Zhengli, a top virologist from the Wuhan institute, once again denied that she conducted gain-offunction research on the coronavirus in a recent interview with The New York Times.

“My lab has never conducted or cooperated in conducting GOF experiments that enhance the virulence of viruses,” she told the newspaper. “This is no longer a question of science. It is speculation rooted in utter distrust.”