Coronavirus: curse of the ‘Bat Woman’ — what went on
in Wuhan lab?
As
America puts the screws on Beijing, there is closer scrutiny of claims that the
coronavirus leaked from a research centre
Shi Zhengli at work in
her Wuhan laboratory, where studies of bat viruses have taken place
JOHANNES EISELE
Philip Sherwell, Asia Correspondent |
, Washington
Sunday April 19 2020, 12.01am BST, The Sunday Times
China’s “bat woman” was attending a conference with colleagues in
Shanghai in late December when an urgent phone call came from her boss at the
Wuhan Institute of Virology.
People
were falling sick from a mysterious new virus just a few miles from the
institute. And Shi Zhengli, who had earned her nickname for her virus-hunting
expeditions to bat caves, was summoned back to the central Chinese city to lead
the laboratory’s investigations of samples taken from patients.
Momentum
is now growing behind a theory that the laboratory itself — an internationally
renowned centre of research — was the source of the coronavirus pandemic that
has since claimed more than 150,000 lives and crippled the world economy.
That was what Shi reportedly feared, and US intelligence
agencies are investigating while the Trump administration puts the screws on China.
But what is the evidence? Is this another Chinese cover-up — or politicised
“baloney” as one top US reseacher claims?
Shi is
an acclaimed virologist who headed the team that traced the source of the
lethal outbreak of Sars — another coronavirus — to horseshoe bats in southern
China in 2002-03. She was a joint author of a research paper that warned last
year that it was “highly likely” that future coronavirus outbreaks would
originate from bats, and an “increased probability” that this would occur in
China.
Within
eight days of her return from Shanghai to Wuhan in December, her team concluded
that the new disease sweeping the city was indeed almost certainly a new bat
coronavirus. But Shi was surprised that the cases had emerged so far from the
bats’ usual habitat in China’s subtropical south. In comments published by
Scientific American magazine, she recalled a nagging fear: “Could they have
come from our lab?”
Shi,
who developed one of the world’s largest databases of bat-related viruses,
frantically pored over the records at the institute. She was checking for any
mishandling of experimental materials from bat virus research, especially
during disposal, Scientific American reported in an article about her work last
month. And she breathed a “sigh of relief” when the results showed that the
sequencing of the new infections did not match those of the viruses her team
had sampled. “That really took a load off my mind,” she said. “I had not slept
a wink for days.”
Since
those early days, though, speculation that the Wuhan institute, which houses
China’s top biosafety laboratory, could have been the source of the outbreak
has swirled online.
It was
long dismissed as an internet conspiracy theory. But amid the US and Chinese
blame game over the handling of the pandemic, the scenario was pushed to centre
stage last week by hawks close to Donald Trump, with the fans flamed by the
president.
The
possibility of a laboratory leak has also been discussed at the highest levels of
the British government. Earlier this month a senior government adviser
described it as “credible” and said “it is not discounted”.
Samples from bats found in caves were sent to the Wuhan
Institute of Virology
ECOHEALTH ALLIANCE
The
leading theory among scientists remains that the virus spread to humans from
bat-infected animals at Wuhan’s now-infamous wildlife market. But findings
published in The Lancet medical journal gave some cause for doubt.
According
to that study, 14 of the first 41 confirmed infected patients had no direct
exposure to the market. For some experts, this suggested that even if the
market had a significant role in transmission it may not have been the source.
Tom
Cotton, a Republican senator, has been raising questions for months. “We don’t
know where it originated and we have to get to the bottom of that,” he said.
“We also know that just a few miles away from that food market is China’s only
biosafety level-four super-laboratory that researches human infectious
diseases.”
By now
the theory that the virus may have leaked from the laboratory by human error,
infecting a worker who would have been “patient zero”, has become common
currency among China hawks.
It
gained added credence last week when it was revealed that in 2018, US embassy
officials in China sent warnings back to Washington about the Wuhan Institute
of Virology.
In two
diplomatic cables, US officials who visited the facility and met Shi expressed
concerns about safety and management weaknesses at the laboratory, according to
The Washington Post. One cable warned that the research into bat coronaviruses
and their potential for human transmission could cause a new Sars-like
epidemic.
Another
piece of circumstantial evidence on the desks of Trump’s national security
analysts is a paper published in February by two Chinese researchers, who said
the virus “probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan”. The authors later
withdrew it, saying they did not have evidence for the theories, but the claims
entered the public domain.
Evidence
of the Chinese Communist Party’s attempts to cover-up the outbreak at the early
stages, even as Shi and her colleagues were investigating its origins, has
further compounded suspicions.
In the
latest revelation, internal party documents seen by the Associated Press
disclosed that China’s leaders delayed warning the public for at least six days
after secretly determining that the country was facing an epidemic.
On
January 14, Ma Xiaowei, the top health official, laid out the grim assessment
to provincial cadres, delivering unspecified instructions from President Xi
Jinping. It was only on January 20 that Xi alerted the Chinese people to the
dangers of the highly contagious disease. During the six-day public silence,
more than 3,000 people had been infected and millions had travelled ahead of
the lunar new year holiday.
Such
secrecy explains why scepticism greeted an announcement by Beijing on Friday
increasing Wuhan’s official Covid-19 death toll by a suspiciously precise 50% —
from 2,579 to 3,869. Chinese officials insisted that the new figures reflected
a more accurate count now that the epidemic had eased, not an earlier effort to
conceal the severity of the crisis.
Many
believe, however, that the figure is still way too low — and that cover-ups
possibly included an accidental leak from Shi’s laboratory.
“We’re
not suggesting that the Chinese had sinister intent, but that they might have
screwed up,” said one Republican national security aide. “It’s perfectly
possible the lab got sloppy and something got out. We know that the Chinese
have been engaged in a more general cover-up over the pandemic, destroying
evidence, cracking down on whistleblowers. Is it not reasonable then to ask
about the origins of the virus, given there was a lab in Wuhan studying bat
coronaviruses?”
In a
press briefing, Trump was asked whether he thought the virus originated in a
lab. He responded: “I don’t want to say that . . . but I will tell you more and
more, we’re hearing the story. We are doing a very thorough examination of this
horrible situation.”
Peter
Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a US research organisation, who has
worked with Shi and her institute for 15 years, is scathing about the lab
accident theory. “The idea that this virus escaped from the laboratory is pure
baloney,” he told the Democracy Now! TV network.
Daszak
said he had collected bat samples with Chinese colleagues — “some of the best
scientists in the world” — and that the Wuhan laboratory did not house the
culture of bat viruses but rather their genetic sequencing. “It’s a
politicisation of the origins of a pandemic and that’s really unfortunate,” he
added.
Shi
herself strongly rejects what she calls “tinfoil-hat” theories. “The novel 2019
coronavirus is nature punishing the human race for keeping uncivilised living
habits,” she told the Caixin website. “I swear on my life that it has nothing
to do with our laboratory.”
But
other scientists are open to the idea that the virus might have originated in
the lab, not a wildlife market. Richard Ebright, professor of chemical biology
at Rutgers University, told The Washington Post that it was “at least as
probable” the virus came from a laboratory accident as from outside the
facility.
Luc
Montagnier, a French scientist who shared a Nobel prize as the co-discoverer of
the HIV virus, also weighed in. No stranger to scientific furores, he claimed
in an interview that the new virus was released accidentally from the
laboratory by scientists working on an Aids vaccine.
In an
election year, Trump undoubtedly has a strong political incentive to pin the
blame for America’s initially lacklustre response to the pandemic on external
sources.
One is the World Health Organisation, the UN body whose funding he suspended last week. Another is
China, with whom relations plummeted further last week after a new State
Department report suggested that Beijing might have conducted secret nuclear tests.
Mike
Pompeo, his secretary of state, ramped up the pressure on Friday, telling the
radio show host Hugh Hewitt: “We are still asking the Chinese Communist Party
to allow experts to get into that virology lab so that we can determine
precisely where this virus began.
“We
don’t know the answer to the question about the precise origination point,”
Pompeo said. “But we do know this: We know that the first sightings of this
occurred within miles of the Wuhan Institute of Virology . . . where there’s
high-end virus research being conducted.”
He
continued: “We know that the Chinese Communist Party, when it began to evaluate
what to do inside of Wuhan, considered whether the [institute] was in fact the
place where this came from. And most importantly, we know that they’ve not
permitted the world’s scientists to go into that laboratory to evaluate what
took place there, what’s happening there, what’s happening there even as we
speak, Hugh, even as we’re on the show this morning. We still have not had
western access to that facility so that we can properly evaluate what really
has taken off all across the world and how that began.
“Those
are facts, and those are important facts,” Pompeo added. “And the Chinese
Communist Party and the World Health Organisation have a responsibility to the
world to take those facts and take them to their logical conclusion and find
out these answers, these important answers. These aren’t political. This is
about science and health, and we need to get to the bottom of it.”
The
claims about the lab might be hotly disputed, but they have resonance with many
Americans. According to a Pew Research poll, only 43% think the virus came
about naturally, while a sizeable 29% believe it was made in a laboratory.
Beijing has repeatedly argued that there is no proof that the
coronavirus originated on Chinese soil, even promoting an outlandish theory that American soldiers might have
brought Covid-19 to China during a military sports competition.
But until irrefutable evidence of the source of the virus emerges, the rest of
the world, not least Trump, will continue to ask questions.
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