Redfield argued COVID-19's efficient human-to-human spread contradicted behavior of other deadly coronaviruses with similar profiles.Ī Top Virologist in China, at Center of a Pandemic Storm, Speaks Out Genomic sequencing efforts are limited in developing countries, but scientists are mobilizing to help.įormer CDC director Redfield explains why he believes COVID-19 emerged from lab, WHO 'compromised' ![]() New Coronavirus Variants Are Urgently Being Tracked Around the World UK scientist at center of pandemic origins debate removed from inquiryĭr Peter Daszak 'recused' from investigation into virus emergence after concerns raised over links with Chinese laboratory. Read the full story at: PolitiFact Factual Reads on Coronavirus (Photo by NORBERTO DUARTE / AFP)Ĭirculating on social media: Claim that AstraZeneca means “weapon that kills.” They caution that hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers must be taken seriously until there is sufficient data.A nurse holds a vial of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vial at "Santo Domingo" nursing home, Asuncion, Paraguay, on April 10, 2021. In a letter published in the journal ?Science’, the experts from world leading universities such as Harvard, Stanford and MIT said knowing how COVID-19 emerged is critical for informing global strategies to mitigate the risk of future outbreaks. The Wuhan Institute of Virology is near the outbreak’s known epicentre of Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan.įormer US president Donald Trump was among those who supported the theory that the virus might have escaped from a bio lab in China.Įarlier this month, a group of leading UK and US scientists called for more investigation to determine the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the theory of an accidental release from a lab in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. The origins of the COVID-19 pandemic remain a widely debated topic, with some scientists and politicians maintaining that the possibility of a lab leak of the deadly virus exists. What more evidence could you want, aside from the presently unobtainable lab records documenting SARS2’s creation,” he wrote. It possessed an unusual enhancement, a furin cleavage site, which is not possessed by any other known SARS-related beta-coronavirus, and this site included a double arginine codon also unknown among beta-coronaviruses. The virus was already well adapted to humans, as expected for a virus grown in humanised mice. “In all of China, the pandemic broke out on the doorstep of the Wuhan institute. So escape of a virus would not be at all surprising,” he said. The researchers were not vaccinated against the viruses under study, and they were working in the minimal safety conditions of a BSL2 laboratory. This is exactly the kind of experiment from which a SARS2-like virus could have emerged. “It’s documented that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were doing gain-of-function experiments designed to make coronaviruses infect human cells and humanized mice. The “proponents of lab escape can explain all the available facts about SARS2 considerably more easily than can those who favour natural emergence,” he wrote. If a virus with the unexpected infectiousness of SARS2 had been generated there, its escape would be no surprise,” he said. They were doing so under the minimal safety conditions of a BSL2 lab. Wuhan is home to China’s leading center of coronavirus research where researchers were genetically engineering bat coronaviruses to attack human cells. ![]() “For the lab escape scenario, a Wuhan origin for the virus is a no-brainer. Wade said that many people know that there are two main theories about its origin – one is that it jumped naturally from wildlife to people and the other is that the virus was under study in a lab, from which it escaped. For lack of access to such records, another approach is to take certain salient facts about the SARS2 virus and ask how well each is explained by the two rival scenarios of origin,” according to him. Proof would consist of evidence from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or related labs in Wuhan, that SARS2 or a predecessor virus was under development there. “But the case, however substantial, falls short of proof. ![]() The evidence adds up to a serious case that the SARS2 virus could have been created in a lab, from which it then escaped, wrote Wade, who refers to SARS-CoV-2 virus as SARS2 in short.
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