He is singled out by the United States: the Chinese virology institute accused of being behind the coronavirus is studying some of the most dangerous pathogens in the world.
US Foreign Minister Mike Pompeo said he had “immense evidence” that the virus leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan (center) – the city where it was spotted in late 2019.
Chinese television deemed the comments “insane” on Monday and the World Health Organization (WHO) denounced “speculative” statements in the absence of evidence.
According to the vast majority of researchers, the coronavirus has been transmitted to humans by an animal. A market in Wuhan has been criticized by Chinese scientists for allegedly selling live wild animals.
What are its researchers doing?
They study viral diseases. More recently, researchers at the institute have helped to better understand Covid-19 when it first appeared in Wuhan.
In February, their work was published in a scientific journal. Conclusion: the genome sequence of the new coronavirus is 80% similar to that of SARS, which caused a previous epidemic in 2002-3, and 96% to that of a bat coronavirus.
Over the years, scientists at the institute have authored dozens of studies and articles on the links between these flying mammals and the emergence of diseases in China.
Many researchers believe that the new coronavirus was probably born in bats. They believe, however, that it has passed through another species, such as the pangolin, before being transmitted to humans.
Significant fact: two researchers from the institute participated in an international study in 2015 with several American universities during which a pathogen had been created in order to analyze the threat of a virus similar to Sras.
What facilities does it have?
The institute has the largest collection of virus strains in Asia, with 1,500 different specimens, according to its website.
It also has a P4 laboratory (for “class 4 pathogen” – the most dangerous). This type of laboratory is a very high security facility, which can house strains of known viruses – like Ebola.
Thirty P4s exist in the world. The one in Wuhan, opened in 2018, was carried out with the collaboration of France. Ambition: to react more quickly to the appearance of infectious diseases.
Since 2012, the institute also has a P3. A type of laboratory that generally studies less dangerous viruses, such as coronaviruses.
Is a leak possible?
Hard to say.
According to the Washington Post daily, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, after several visits to the institute, alerted U.S. officials in 2018 about apparently inadequate security measures at the Wuhan institute.
The institute said it had received samples from the then unknown virus circulating in Wuhan as of December 30 (then identified as SARS-CoV-2), had sequenced its genome on January 2 and then transmitted this information to WHO on January 11.
The director of the Institute of Virology, Yuan Zhiming, categorically denied in April that his laboratory was the source of the new coronavirus.
In an interview with Scientific American, researcher Shi Zhengli, one of the leading Chinese virologists, vice-director of P4, said that the genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 does not match any of the bald coronaviruses. mice studied in his institute.
What do scientists know about the virus?
Researchers point to the fact that there is no evidence to support the Wuhan virology institute’s leak hypothesis.
There is also no formal evidence that it comes from the market suspected of having sold live wild animals.
A Chinese study, published in The Lancet in January, indicated that the first known patient of Covid-19 was unrelated to the market.
According to Professor Leo Poon of the University of Hong Kong, the consensus of the scientific community is that the virus was not created by humans. However, he called for the origin of the virus to be clarified.
“This is important in public health because we want to know how it happened and (if we can) learn” from this experience, he said.
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