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Wuhan lab leak origin of Covid-19, Parliament panel told

Asked by the panel about the probability of a lab leak as the origin of the pandemic, Chan said a lab origin is more likely than natural origin at this point…reports Asian Lite News.

A Canadian molecular biologist, on Wednesday, told cross-party members of Parliament (MPs) on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee that a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan region of China is now the more likely origin of the COVID-19 global pandemic.

Dr Alina Chan, specialising in gene therapy and cell engineering and co-author of ‘Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19’, told the Parliament panel’s evidence session on scientific research that the pandemic was being caused by the unique feature of the coronavirus called furin cleavage site, which has been linked to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Asked by the panel about the probability of a lab leak as the origin of the pandemic, Chan said a lab origin is more likely than natural origin at this point.

We all agree that there was a critical event at the Huanan Seafood Market, that was a superspreader event caused by humans. There is no evidence pointing to a natural animal origin of the virus at that market, she noted.

On the question of her level of confidence that the world would eventually be able to establish the true origins of Covid-19, Chan said it was simply a matter of time.

“Right now it is not safe for people who know about the origin of this pandemic to come forward. It might be five years from now, it might be 50 years from now, but we live in an era where there’s so much data being collected and stored…we just need a credible, systematic investigation,” she said.

On whether the virus was modified in the lab before a leak, Chan said, “We have heard from many top virologists that a genetically engineered origin of this virus is reasonable…and this includes virologists who themselves have made modifications to the first SARS virus.”

“We know now that this virus has a very unique feature, called the furin cleavage site that makes it the pandemic pathogen it is. So, without this feature, there is no way this would be causing this pandemic. Only recently in September did a proposal get leaked showing that scientists from the EcoHealth Alliance were in collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology developing this pipeline for inserting novel furin cleavage sites, these genetic modifications, into SARS-like viruses in the lab.”

Chan stressed that the burden was on the scientists in question to show that their work did not result in the creation of SARS-COV2, the virus behind COVID-19, and that an investigation of documents being made available by US-based EcoHealth Alliance could hold the key.

Her co-author, Lord Matt Ridley, was also asked similar questions about the lab leak theory and he concurred with Chan’s assertion that it was more likely than not the cause behind the pandemic.

“We have to face the fact that after two months we knew the origins of SARS through markets, and after a couple of months we knew the origin of MERS through camels. In this case, after two years we still haven’t found a single infected animal that could be the progenitor of this pandemic; that’s extremely surprising,” he said.

Ridley, along with Chan, agreed that any leak was most likely an accident as he traced the journey of scientists a few years ago to bring SARS-like viruses back to Wuhan for experiments.

It does have to be taken seriously. It is regrettable that in 2020 there was a pretty systematic attempt to shut down this topic, he noted.

Ridley said, “We need to find out so we can prevent the next pandemic. We need to know whether we should be tightening up work in laboratories or whether we should be tightening up regulations relating to wildlife sales in markets. At the moment we are really not doing either.”

“We also need to know to deter bad actors who are watching this episode and thinking that unleashing a pandemic is something they could get away with.”

Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet’ medical journal, also agreed that the lab leak theory behind COVID-19 is a hypothesis that needs to be taken seriously and needs to be investigated further, as referenced by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The evidence session forms part of the UK Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee inquiry into “reproducibility and research integrity”, which is expected to produce its findings in 2022.

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‘Wuhan lab head, US expert flagged coronavirus risk in 2015’

Many experts have until recently denied the lab-leak theory and claimed that coronavirus originated as a natural infection leaping from animals to humans. But now, there has been a shift, reports Asian Lite News

The head of China’s Wuhan virology lab, also called as the ‘bat woman’, and an expert from the University of North Carolina in the US, had in a paper published in 2015 flagged the dangers of their gain-of-function experiment of a novel coronavirus which could infect human cells, media reports said.

In the research, Shi Zhengli and epidemiologist Ralph Baric used mice as subjects and inserted the protein from a Chinese rufous horseshoe bat into the molecular structure of the SARS virus from 2002, creating a new, infectious pathogen, the Vanity Fair reported on Thursday.AA

“Scientific review panels may deem similar studies too risky to pursue,” the researchers wrote in the paper and warned the world of “a potential risk of SARS-CoV re-emergence from viruses currently circulating in bat populations”.

coronavirus
Wuhan Institute of Virology

The findings were published in scientific journal Nature Medicine. It was unearthed by a small team of investigators, commissioned by Matthew Pottinger, the deputy National Security Adviser in the Donald Trump administration. The team aimed to unravel the origins of Covid-19.

The Vanity Fair report quoted Pottinger as saying there were so many people within the government “wholly discounting the possibility of a lab leak, who were predisposed that it was impossible”.

ALSO READ – Pompeo says Wuhan lab was into military research

In addition, many leading experts had either received or approved funding for gain-of-function research. Their “conflicted” status, said Pottinger, “played a profound role in muddying the waters and contaminating the shot at having an impartial inquiry”.

Chinese President Xi Jinping visits Anhui Innovation Center and learns about the technological innovation in Hefei, capital of east China’s Anhui Province. (XinhuaYan Yan)

The 2015 paper’s acknowledgments also cited funding from the US National Institutes of Health and from a nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance, which had parcelled out grant money from the US Agency for International Development, the report said.

Many experts have until recently denied the lab-leak theory and claimed that Covid-19 originated as a natural infection leaping from animals to humans. But now, there has been a shift.

ALSO READ – China targets Fauci amid Wuhan lab controversy

A team of 18 scientists from Universities in the US, Canada, the UK and Switzerland have signed a letter in the journal Science arguing the need to determine the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic. Various other studies have hinted at Covid-19 as a result of the Wuhan lab-leak. The US’ top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci also said he is “not convinced” Covid-19 developed naturally.

Dr Anthony Fauci

US President Joe Biden has recently ordered the intelligence community to re-double efforts to examine how the virus originated, including the lab accident theory. The European Union, the UK, Australia, and Japan also have joined the US in seeking a deeper probe into the origins of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, China’s Foreign Ministry has last week dismissed the Wuhan lab leak theory as “extremely impossible” and have accused the US of “political manipulation”, media reports noted. (IANS)

ALSO READ – ‘Wuhan lab staff got sick before Covid outbreak’

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Risk of bioweapons from Wuhan ‘very real’: Pompeo

Mike Pompeo said China “covered up” the origins of COVID-19 and that evidence continues to mount despite their efforts to deny access to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, reports Asian Lite News

The evidence suggests that the coronavirus originated from the lab in Wuhan city of China, said former US Secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, adding that the risk of bioweapons and bioterror arising from the region is “very real”.

Pompeo told Fox News that the Chinese Communist Party “covered up” the origins of COVID-19 and that evidence continues to mount despite their efforts to deny access to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“We worked to get every bit of evidence that we could, we tried to deliver this to the CDC, tried to work with the Chinese. They covered it up terribly,” Pompeo said.

He said the combination of circumstantial evidence and China’s intense effort to deny any information relating to the lab suggests to him that the virus originated in that lab.

“I haven’t seen a shred of evidence to suggest anything to the contrary,” Pompeo said.

“The risk that something like this happens again from that laboratory or another Chinese laboratory is very real,” Pompeo said. “They [China] are operating and conducting activities that are inconsistent with their capacity to secure those facilities. And the risk of bioweapons and bioterror emanating from this region is very real.”

Pompeo also warned that similar scenarios could happen in the future, pointing to the possibility of biological warfare.

Recently, findings in a report in an Australian daily has yet again reinforced the call that international investigators must dig deeper to rule out whether COVID-19 is a made-in-China bioweapon.

The controversy about Covid-19 origins has resurfaced after the Weekend Australian newspaper revealed that Chinese scientists were thinking about bioweapons, visualising a World War-3 scenario.

The daily cited a Chinese government document that discussed the weaponisation of SARS coronavirus. Titled the Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons, the 2015 paper was authored by Chinese scientists, Chinese public health officials and members of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

Last month, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken launched a scathing attack against China for a lack of transparency during “the early stages” of the coronavirus pandemic and called for a more thorough investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

Blinken’s remarks come as a report of a joint inquiry by the World Health Organisation and China published in March did not conclusively establish how or when the virus began spreading and did little to address Western concerns that the Chinese Communist Party bent the investigation to its advantage.

The WHO report determined that the possibility the virus came from a lab was “extremely unlikely,” noting there was “no record” any lab had closely related viruses.

After the report was released, several countries including the United States, Australia and Canada released a statement, saying that they “fully” supported the WHO’s efforts to bring an end to the pandemic, including understanding how it “started and spread”.

But they added it was “essential that we voice our shared concerns that the international expert study on the source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was significantly delayed and lacked access to complete, original data and samples”.

Scientists call for probe

A team of 18 scientists from Universities in the US, Canada, the UK and Switzerland said that more investigation is needed to determine the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable,” they wrote in a letter published on Thursday in the journal Science.

“Knowing how Covid-19 emerged is critical for informing global strategies to mitigate the risk of future outbreaks,” said the researchers led by Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary virologist at the University of Washington, US.

The Coronavirus disease, which was first documented on December 1, 2019 from Wuhan City in China, has since spread like wildfire throughout the globe. The overall global Covid-19 caseload has topped 160.8 million, while the deaths have surged to more than 3.34 million, so far.

The team of researchers lauded the efforts of scientists in understanding SARS-CoV-2 — its transmission, pathogenesis, and mitigation by vaccines, therapeutics, and non-pharmaceutical interventions. Yet, even after 17 months, how the coronavirus pandemic exactly began still remains a mystery.

The researchers highlighted a joint China-World Health Organization (WHO) report into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, some results of which were released in November 2020.

“WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus commented that the report’s consideration of evidence supporting a laboratory accident was insufficient,” they noted.

“As scientists with relevant expertise, we agree with the WHO director-general, the United States and 13 other countries, and the European Union that greater clarity about the origins of this pandemic is necessary and feasible to achieve,” they said. They call for an investigation that is “transparent, objective, data-driven, inclusive of broad expertise, subject to independent oversight, and responsibly managed.”

“In this time of unfortunate anti-Asian sentiment in some countries, we note that at the beginning of the pandemic, it was Chinese doctors, scientists, journalists, and citizens who shared with the world crucial information about the spread of the virus — often at great personal cost. We should show the same determination in promoting a dispassionate science-based discourse on this difficult but important issue,” they said. (ANI/IANS)

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