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Scientists Press Case In opposition to the Covid Lab Leak Concept

Scientists Press Case Against the Covid Lab Leak Theory

In the recent debate on the origins of the coronavirus, a group of scientists this week presented an overview of scientific findings that they believe show that natural spread from animals to humans is a far more likely cause of the pandemic than a laboratory incident.

The scientists refer, among other things, to a recent report showing that markets in Wuhan, China, had sold live animals susceptible to the virus, including civet cats and raccoon dogs, in the two years before the pandemic began. They observed the striking similarity of the appearance of Covid-19 to other viral diseases caused by natural spillovers and pointed to a variety of newly discovered viruses in animals that are closely related to the virus that caused the new pandemic.

The back and forth among scientists takes place as intelligence agencies work with a deadline for the end of summer to give President Biden an assessment of the origin of the pandemic. There is now disagreement among intelligence officials as to which scenario is more likely for a viral origin.

The new paper, which went online on Wednesday but has yet to be published in a scientific journal, was written by a team of 21 virologists. Four of them also worked on a 2020 paper in Nature Medicine that largely ruled out the possibility that laboratory manipulation could turn the virus into a human pathogen.

In the new paper, the scientists provided further evidence that the virus was spilled from an animal host outside of a laboratory. Joel Wertheim, a virologist at the University of California, San Diego and co-author, said a key point in support of natural origin is the “uncanny similarity” between the Covid and SARS pandemics. Both viruses appeared in China in late autumn, he said, with the first known cases emerging near animal markets in cities – Wuhan in the case of Covid and Shenzen in the case of SARS.

In the SARS epidemic, the new paper suggests that scientists will eventually trace its origin back to viruses that infected bats far from Shenzen.

Due to the spread of viruses similar to the new coronavirus in Asia, Dr. Wertheim and his colleagues predict that the origin of SARS-CoV-2 will also be a long way from Wuhan.

Since first surfacing in the final months of 2019, the viral culprit of this pandemic has not yet been found in any animal.

In May, another team of 18 scientists published a letter arguing that the possibility of a laboratory leak must be taken seriously due to insufficient evidence of a natural origin for the coronavirus or a leak from a laboratory. Wuhan, where the pandemic was first documented, is home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, WIV for short, where researchers have been studying coronaviruses from bats for years.

One of the signatories of the May 2021 letter, Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, co-authored the new paper, which advocates natural spillover.

He said his views evolved as more information emerged. Among other reasons for Dr. Worobey’s shift was the growing evidence of the Huanan animal market in Wuhan. When the pandemic first appeared in Wuhan, Chinese officials tested hundreds of samples from animals sold in the market and did not find the coronavirus in any of them.

But last month, a team of researchers presented an inventory of 47,381 animals from 38 species that were sold in Wuhan’s markets between May 2017 and November 2019. This included species such as civets and raccoon dogs, which can act as intermediate hosts for coronaviruses.

Dr. Worobey called this study “a groundbreaking paper”.

He also pointed out the timing of the earliest cases of Covid in Wuhan. “The Huanan market is right in the epicenter of the outbreak, with later cases radiating into space from there,” said Dr. Worobey in an email.

“No early cases cluster near the WIV, which has been the focus of most speculation about a possible lab escape,” he said.

However, other scholars say that such arguments are speculative and that the new review is mostly a repetition of what is already known.

“Basically, it really boils down to an argument that because almost all previous pandemics have been natural in origin, it must be,” said David Relman, a Stanford University microbiologist who organized the May Letter to Science.

He noted that he does not reject the natural origin hypothesis as a plausible explanation for the pandemic jump. But dr. Relman believes the new paper is “a selective sample of outcomes to be used to argue one side”.

Dr. In their new paper, Worobey and his colleagues also presented evidence against the notion that so-called gain-of-function research, which intentionally changes the function of a virus, may have played a role in the pandemic. The researchers argue that the coronavirus genome does not have mandatory signatures of manipulation. And the diversity that coronavirus scientists have discovered in Asian bats could serve as an evolutionary source for Covid-19.

But Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University and a staunch critic of attempts to reduce the likelihood of a laboratory leak, said this was a straw man argument.

Dr. Ebright said it was possible that a WIV laboratory worker caught the coronavirus on a field expedition to examine bats or while processing a virus in the laboratory. The new paper, he argued, did not address such possibilities.

“The review does not advance the discussion,” said Dr. Ebright.

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Health

Covid Lab-Leak Idea Renews ‘Achieve-of-Perform’ Analysis Debate

Covid Lab-Leak Theory Renews "Gain-of-Function" Research Debate

In the United States, “there are no biosafety rules or regulations that have the force of law,” he said. “And this is in contrast to every other aspect of biomedical research.” There are enforceable rules, for example, for experiments with human subjects, vertebrate animals, radioactive materials and lasers, but none for research with disease-causing organisms.

Dr. Relman, who also supports the need for independent regulation, cautioned that legal restrictions, as opposed to guidelines or more flexible regulations, could also pose problems. “The law is cumbersome and slow,” he said. At one point in the evolution of laws relating to biological warfare, for example, Congress prohibited the possession of smallpox. But the rule’s language, Dr. Relman said, also seemed to ban possession of the vaccine because of its genetic similarity to the virus itself. “To try to fix it took forever,” he said.

The current H.H.S. policy also doesn’t offer much guidance about working with scientists in other countries. Some have different policies about gain-of-function research, while others have none at all.

Dr. Gronvall of Johns Hopkins argued that the U.S. government cannot dictate what scientists do in other parts of the world. “You have to embrace self-governance,” she said. “You’re not able to sit on everyone’s shoulder.”

Even if other countries fall short on gain-of-function research policies, Dr. Lipsitch said that shouldn’t stop the United States from developing better ones. As the world’s leader in biomedical research, the country could set an example. “The United States is sufficiently central,” Dr. Lipsitch said. “What we do really does matter.”

Ironically, the pandemic put deliberations over such issues on hold. But there’s no question the coronavirus will influence the shape of the debate. Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, said that before the pandemic, the idea of a new virus sweeping the world and causing millions of deaths felt hypothetically plausible. Now he has seen what such a virus can do.

“You have to think really carefully about any kind of research that could lead to that sort of mishap in the future,” Dr. Bloom said.

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Health

Covid Lab-Leak Principle Renews “Achieve-of-Operate” Analysis Debate

Covid Lab-Leak Theory Renews "Gain-of-Function" Research Debate

In the United States, “there are no biosafety rules or regulations that have the force of law,” he said. “And this is in contrast to every other aspect of biomedical research.” There are enforceable rules, for example, for experiments with human subjects, vertebrate animals, radioactive materials and lasers, but none for research with disease-causing organisms.

Dr. Relman, who also supports the need for independent regulation, cautioned that legal restrictions, as opposed to guidelines or more flexible regulations, could also pose problems. “The law is cumbersome and slow,” he said. At one point in the evolution of laws relating to biological warfare, for example, Congress prohibited the possession of smallpox. But the rule’s language, Dr. Relman said, also seemed to ban possession of the vaccine because of its genetic similarity to the virus itself. “To try to fix it took forever,” he said.

The current H.H.S. policy also doesn’t offer much guidance about working with scientists in other countries. Some have different policies about gain-of-function research, while others have none at all.

Dr. Gronvall of Johns Hopkins argued that the U.S. government cannot dictate what scientists do in other parts of the world. “You have to embrace self-governance,” she said. “You’re not able to sit on everyone’s shoulder.”

Even if other countries fall short on gain-of-function research policies, Dr. Lipsitch said that shouldn’t stop the United States from developing better ones. As the world’s leader in biomedical research, the country could set an example. “The United States is sufficiently central,” Dr. Lipsitch said. “What we do really does matter.”

Ironically, the pandemic put deliberations over such issues on hold. But there’s no question the coronavirus will influence the shape of the debate. Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, said that before the pandemic, the idea of a new virus sweeping the world and causing millions of deaths felt hypothetically plausible. Now he has seen what such a virus can do.

“You have to think really carefully about any kind of research that could lead to that sort of mishap in the future,” Dr. Bloom said.

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Politics

Virus Scientist Kristian Andersen On Fauci Electronic mail and Lab-Leak Principle

Virus Scientist Kristian Andersen On Fauci Email and Lab-Leak Theory

Among the thousands of pages of Dr. Anthony S. Fauci’s emails released recently by BuzzFeed News, a short note from Kristian Andersen, a virologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., has garnered a lot of attention.

Over the past year, Dr. Andersen has been one of the most outspoken proponents of the theory that the coronavirus originated from a natural spillover from an animal to humans outside of a lab. But in the email to Dr. Fauci in January 2020, Dr. Andersen hadn’t yet come to that conclusion. He told Dr. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, that some features of the virus made him wonder whether it had been engineered, and noted that he and his colleagues were planning to investigate further by analyzing the virus’s genome.

The researchers published those results in a paper in the scientific journal Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020, concluding that a laboratory origin was very unlikely. Dr. Andersen has reiterated this point of view in interviews and on Twitter over the past year, putting him at the center of the continuing controversy over whether the virus could have leaked from a Chinese lab.

When his early email to Dr. Fauci was released, the media storm around Dr. Andersen intensified, and he deactivated his Twitter account. He answered written questions from The New York Times about the email and the fracas. The exchange has been lightly edited for length.

Much has been made of your email to Dr. Fauci in late January 2020, shortly after the coronavirus genome was first sequenced. You said, “The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered.”

Can you explain what you meant?

Kristian Andersen At the time, based on limited data and preliminary analyses, we observed features that appeared to potentially be unique to SARS-CoV-2. We had not yet seen these features in other related viruses from natural sources, and thus were exploring whether they had been engineered into the virus.

Those features included a structure known as the furin cleavage site that allows the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to be cleaved by furin, an enzyme found in human cells, and another structure, known as the receptor binding domain, that allowed the virus to anchor to the outside of human cells via a cell-surface protein known as ACE2.

Credit…Scripps Research Institute

You also said you found the virus’s genome to be “inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.”

Andersen This was a reference to the features of SARS-CoV-2 that we identified based on early analyses that didn’t appear to have an obvious immediate evolutionary precursor. We hadn’t yet performed more in-depth analyses to reach a conclusion, rather were sharing our preliminary observations.

I cautioned in that same email that we would need to look at the question much more closely and that our opinions could change within a few days based on new data and analyses — which they did.

In March, you and other scientists published the Nature Medicine paper saying that “we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.” Can you explain how the research changed your view?

Andersen The features in SARS-CoV-2 that initially suggested possible engineering were identified in related coronaviruses, meaning that features that initially looked unusual to us weren’t.

Many of these analyses were completed in a matter of days, while we worked around the clock, which allowed us to reject our preliminary hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 might have been engineered, while other “lab”-based scenarios were still on the table.

Yet more extensive analyses, significant additional data and thorough investigations to compare genomic diversity more broadly across coronaviruses led to the peer-reviewed study published in Nature Medicine. For example, we looked at data from coronaviruses found in other species, such as bats and pangolins, which demonstrated that the features that first appeared unique to SARS-CoV-2 were in fact found in other, related viruses.

Overall, this is a textbook example of the scientific method where a preliminary hypothesis is rejected in favor of a competing hypothesis after more data become available and analyses are completed.

As you know, there has been a lot of speculation and hype over the past few weeks about a particular protein in the coronavirus: the furin cleavage site. Some people, including virologist David Baltimore, say the presence of this protein could be a sign of human manipulation of the virus, whereas you and other virologists have said it naturally evolved. Can you explain for readers why you don’t think it is proof of an engineered virus?

Andersen Furin cleavage sites are found all across the coronavirus family, including in the betacoronavirus genus that SARS-CoV-2 belongs to. There has been much speculation that patterns found in the virus’s RNA that are responsible for certain portions of the furin cleavage site represent evidence of engineering. Specifically, people are pointing to two “CGG” sequences that code for the amino acid arginine in the furin cleavage site as strong evidence that the virus was made in the lab. Such statements are factually incorrect.

While it’s true that CGG is less common than other patterns that code for arginine, the CGG codon is found elsewhere in the SARS-CoV-2 genome and the genetic sequence[s] that include the CGG codon found in SARS-CoV-2 are also found in other coronaviruses. These findings, together with many other technical features of the site, strongly suggest that it evolved naturally and there is very little chance somebody engineered it.

Do you still believe that all laboratory scenarios are implausible? If not an engineered virus, what about an accidental leak from the Wuhan lab?

Andersen As we stated in our article last March, it is currently impossible to prove or disprove specific hypotheses of SARS-CoV-2 origin. However, while both lab and natural scenarios are possible, they are not equally likely — precedence, data and other evidence strongly favor natural emergence as a highly likely scientific theory for the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, while the lab leak remains a speculative hypothesis based on conjecture.

Based on detailed analyses of the virus conducted to date by researchers around the world, it is extremely unlikely that the virus was engineered. The scenario in which the virus was found in nature, brought to the lab and then accidentally release[d] is similarly unlikely, based on current evidence.

In contrast, the scientific theory about the natural emergence of SARS-CoV-2 presents a far simpler and more likely scenario. The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 is very similar to that of SARS-CoV-1, including its seasonal timing, location and association with the human food chain.

Some people have pointed to your email to Dr. Fauci, suggesting that it raises questions about whether scientists and government officials gave more credence to the lab-leak theory than they let on to the public. And some recent reports have suggested that certain government officials didn’t want to talk about the lab-leak theory because it would draw attention to the government’s support of so-called gain-of-function research.

What is your response to these suggestions? Were you worried in the spring of 2020 about the public latching on to a lab-leak theory?

Andersen My primary concern last spring, which is true to this day, is to perform research to discern exactly how SARS-CoV-2 emerged in the human population.

I won’t speak to what government officials and other scientists did or didn’t say or think. My comments and conclusions are strictly driven by scientific inquiry, and I strongly believe that careful, well-supported public messaging around complex topics is paramount.

Many scientists have now expressed an openness to the possibility that a lab leak occurred. Looking back over the past year, do you have any regrets about the way you or the broader scientific community have communicated with the public about the lab-leak idea?

Andersen First, it is important to say that the scientific community has made tremendous inroads in understanding Covid-19 in a remarkably short amount of time. Vigorous debate is integral to science and that’s what we have seen regarding the origins of SARS-CoV-2.

It can be difficult at times for the public, I think, to observe the debate and discern the likelihood of the various hypotheses. That is particularly true where science becomes politicized, and the current vilification of scientists and subject matter experts sets a dangerous precedent. We saw that with the climate change debate and now we’re seeing it with the debate around various facets of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Throughout this pandemic, I have made my best efforts to help explain what the scientific evidence is and suggests, and I have no regrets about that.

Do you support President Biden’s call for U.S. intelligence agencies to further investigate these various possibilities? Could they find anything that would change your mind?

Andersen I have always supported further inquiries into the origin of SARS-CoV-2, including President Biden’s recent call, as it is important that we more fully understand how the virus emerged.

As is true for any scientific process, there are several things that would lend credence to the lab-leak hypothesis that would make me change my mind. For example, any credible evidence of SARS-CoV-2 having been at the Wuhan Institute of Virology prior to the pandemic — whether in a freezer, in tissue culture or in animals, or epidemiological evidence of very early confirmed Covid-19 cases associated with the institute.

Other evidence, were it to emerge, could lend further weight to the natural origin hypothesis. That includes the identification of an intermediate [animal] host (if one exists). Also, now that we know that live animals were sold at markets across Wuhan, further understanding of the flow of animals and connected supply lines could lend additional credence to natural emergence.

It seems that you’ve shut down your Twitter account. Why? Will you come back?

Andersen I have always seen Twitter as a way to interact with other scientists and the general public to encourage open and transparent dialogue about science.

Increasingly, however, I found that information and comments I posted were being taken out of context or misrepresented to push false narratives, in particular about the origins of SARS-CoV-2. Daily attacks against scientists and the scientific method have also become common, and much of the conversation has steered far away from the science.

For those reasons, I felt that at present, I could no longer productively contribute to the platform, and I decided it would be more productive for me to invest more of my time into our infectious disease research, including that on Covid-19.

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Politics

Concentrating on ‘Important Race Concept,’ Republicans Rattle American Faculties

Targeting 'Critical Race Theory,' Republicans Rattle American Schools

Still, he acknowledged that Republicans had “figured out how to message this.”

The messaging goes back to Mr. Trump, who, in the final weeks of the 2020 campaign, announced the formation of the 1776 Commission, set up explicitly to link what he said was “left-wing indoctrination” in schools to the sometimes violent protests over police killings.

A report by the commission was derided by mainstream historians; Mr. Biden canceled the project on his first day in office, but its impact endures on the right.

Media Matters for America, a liberal group, documented a surge of negative coverage of critical race theory by Fox News beginning in mid-2020 and spiking in April, with 235 mentions. And the Pew Research Center found last year that Americans were deeply divided over their perceptions of racial discrimination. Over 60 percent of conservatives said it was a bigger problem that people see discrimination where it does not exist, rather than ignoring discrimination that really does exist. Only 9 percent of liberals agreed.

Some Democratic strategists said the issue was a political liability for their party. Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, recently wrote, “The steady march of ‘anti-racist’ ideology” into school curriculums “will generate a backlash among normie parents.”

In an interview, he criticized leading Democrats for not calling out critical race theory because of their fear that “it will bring down the wrath of the woker elements of the party.”

In Loudoun County, Va., dueling parent groups are squaring off, one that calls itself “anti-racist” and the other opposed to what it sees as the creep of critical race theory in the school district, which enrolls 81,000 students from a rapidly diversifying region outside Washington.

After a 2019 report found a racial achievement gap, disproportionate discipline meted out to Black and Hispanic students, and the common use of racial slurs in schools, administrators adopted a “plan to combat systemic racism.” It calls for mandatory teacher training in “systemic oppression and implicit bias.”

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Health

Scientists Don’t Need to Ignore the Wuhan ‘Lab Leak’ Concept, Regardless of No New Proof

Scientists Don’t Want to Ignore the Wuhan ‘Lab Leak’ Theory, Despite No New Evidence

As scientists find more animal coronaviruses, they can recognize more and more pieces of SARS-CoV-2 spread out among them. Researchers have also been able to reconstruct some of the evolutionary steps by which SARS-CoV-2 evolved into a potential human pathogen while it was still infecting animals.

This pattern is probably one that’s been followed by many viruses that are now major burdens on human health. H.I.V., for example, most likely had its origin in the early 1900s, when hunters in West Africa got infected with viruses that infected chimpanzees and other primates.

But some scientists thought it was too soon to conclude something similar happened in the case of SARS-CoV-2. After all, the coronavirus first came to light in the city of Wuhan, home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers study dozens of strains of coronaviruses collected in caves in southern China.

Still, that a top lab studying this family of viruses happens to be located in the same city where the epidemic emerged could very well be a coincidence. Wuhan is an urban center larger than New York City, with a steady flow of visitors from other parts of China. It also has many large markets dealing in wildlife brought from across China and beyond. When wild animals are kept in close quarters, viruses have an opportunity to jump from species to species, sometimes resulting in dangerous recombinations that can lead to new diseases.

That lab’s research began after another coronavirus led to the SARS epidemic in 2002. Researchers soon found relatives of that virus, called SARS-CoV, in bats, as well as civet cats, which are sold in Chinese markets. The discovery opened the eyes of scientists to all the animal coronaviruses with the potential of spilling over the species line and starting a new pandemic.

Virologists can take many measures to reduce the risk of getting infected with the viruses they study. But over the years, some accidents have happened. Researchers have gotten sick, and they’ve infected others with their experimental viruses.

In 2004, for example, a researcher at the National Institute of Virology in Beijing got infected with the coronavirus that causes SARS. She passed it on to others, including her mother, who died from the infection.

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Politics

Biden orders nearer evaluation of Covid origins as U.S. intel weighs Wuhan lab leak concept

Biden orders closer review of Covid origins as U.S. intel weighs Wuhan lab leak theory

Security personnel stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan as members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus make a visit to the institute in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province on February 3, 2021.

Hector Retamal | AFP | Getty Images

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced that he has ordered a closer intelligence review of what he said were two equally plausible scenarios of the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Biden revealed that earlier this year he tasked the Intelligence Community with preparing “a report on their most up-to-date analysis of the origins of Covid-19, including whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident.”

“As of today, the U.S. Intelligence Community has ‘coalesced around two likely scenarios’ but has not reached a definitive conclusion on this question,” Biden said in a statement.

“Here is their current position: ‘while two elements in the IC leans toward the former scenario and one leans more toward the latter – each with low or moderate confidence – the majority of elements do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other,” said the president.

Biden used the Intelligence Community’s traditional language when they provide assessments to a president. This includes explaining to the president when different agencies within the IC disagree, and always giving the president the level of confidence they have in the accuracy of the raw intelligence.

Biden issued the new directives as the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, still officially unknown, come under increasing scrutiny.

The hypothesis that the virus may have escaped from a laboratory, while initially dismissed by some as a conspiracy theory, has in recent months gained more mainstream traction.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky last week said in Senate testimony that a lab-leak origin “certainly” was “one possibility.”

White House officials told reporters Tuesday that China hasn’t been “completely transparent” in the global investigation into the origins of Covid-19, and that a full investigation is needed to determine whether the virus that’s killed almost 3.5 million people came from nature or a lab.

“We need to get to the bottom of this, whatever the answer may be,” White House senior covid-19 advisor Andy Slavitt told reporters at a covid briefing Tuesday. “We need a completely transparent process from China, we need the [World Health Organization] to assist in that matter and we don’t feel like we have that now.”

The World Health Organization said in March that it was “extremely unlikely” that the virus was introduced to humans through an accidental lab leak. But that report was heavily criticized by scientists who said the WHO gave the possibility of a lab accident short shrift compared with a natural-origin scenario..

“The report lacks crucial data, information, and access. It represents a partial and incomplete picture,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at the time when asked about WHO’s stance on Covid’s origins.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which leads the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies, did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not immediately respond to CNBC.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

—- CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger and Amanda Macias contributed to this story.

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Health

U.S. ought to dig deeper into concept that Covid originated in a Wuhan lab, ex-Clinton official says

U.S. should dig deeper into theory that Covid originated in a Wuhan lab, ex-Clinton official says

The U.S. should play a bigger role in getting to the bottom of the theory that Covid-19 first leaked from a virology lab in Wuhan, China, Atlantic Council senior fellow Jamie Metzl told CNBC on Monday.

“Right now the World Health Assembly is meeting and the United States should do everything possible with our allies to demand a full investigation into the origin of Covid with full access to all records, samples and staff in China and beyond,” said Metzl former national security officer in the Clinton administration, said in The News with Shepard Smith.

“If China wants to turn its nose to the rest of the world despite more than 3 million deaths, let them make that statement,” he said.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that the determination of the origin of Covid-19 is subject to an international investigation by the World Health Organization and that the U.S. cannot conduct its own investigation.

Metzl organized a group of scientists and academics last year to call for a deeper investigation into the origins of Covid. He told host Shepard Smith that it was “critically important” to find answers to the causes of the pandemic, because if we do not, everyone would be “unnecessarily at risk”.

The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

A previously unpublished US intelligence report found that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were seeking treatment in hospital after an illness, “with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illnesses,” the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday and quoted from the report.

The World Health Organization has repeatedly said that the virus most likely jumped from bats to humans through another animal. It has described the theory that the virus leaked from a laboratory as “extremely unlikely” but has not ruled it out. Metzl said he thought the theory was a “likely hypothesis”.

“Why should there be a bat coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan and not in southern China where the horseshoe bats are? And what we know they are in Wuhan is China’s only level 4 virology institute with the largest in the world Collection of bats coronaviruses that did aggressive research to make these pathogens more dangerous, “Metzl said.