the leak of a lab is possible, but still not proven

It is possible that the chain of infections that spread the Sars-CoV-2 virus around the world began, like most new diseases, when an animal virus found its own way to infect humans. [la maladie est alors appelée zoonose]whether in a field or on a farm, in a cave or in a market. It is also possible that the chain originated in a laboratory in the Chinese state. Both of these possibilities are accepted by many who have long studied the Covid-19 pandemic. But just because these two things are possible does not mean that they are equally probable.

For most of 2020, scientists and the media tended to view the likelihood of a lab leak as extremely low, with daily contact – zoonosis – appearing significantly more likely. This is no longer the case.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), said in March that the laboratory’s hypothesis had not yet been analyzed in sufficient depth. On May 26, President Joe Biden ordered U.S. intelligence services, which have yet to come to a conclusion on the matter, to redouble their efforts in this direction.

The location most closely associated with the appearance of Sars-CoV-2 is a seafood and live animal market in Wuhan, China. The country’s wild animal markets, supplied with civets, rats, pangolins and badgers, are veritable viral crucibles rich in zoonosis risks.

In the 2010s, a study carried out in Vietnam showed that animals transmit coronaviruses to each other when they are transferred to restaurants or markets; there is no reason to believe that Chinese supply chains are safer. In February 2020, recognizing the threat, China officially banned the consumption and trading of wild animals. An important and costly decision.

Research close to the Wuhan market

It was from simple geographical considerations that we first discussed the possibility of a laboratory leak. The relevant market is only 12 kilometers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), a global coronavirus research center. The Wuhan Center for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), which was also working on bat coronaviruses, is even closer: just 500 meters.

One or more staff at these facilities could have been infected with a coronavirus used in research, allowing them to reach the outside world. Another idea, of the same order, would be that the virus would come directly from a bat or another animal, either in the enclosure of a laboratory or as part of research in the field. Among CDC employees is an avid collector of wild bat viruses.

If any of these possibilities were true, it would be deeply disturbing irony. Since the SARS epidemic, a respiratory disease caused by another coronavirus in the early 2000s, coronaviruses have been considered to have an unfortunate propensity to trigger a pandemic. This is why researchers in Wuhan are interested: their work on coronaviruses was carried out in the hope of reducing the threat.

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