The origin of COVID-19 has been the subject of heated debates. Analysis of the genomic data by an international team of experts has concluded that SARS-CoV-2 (the biological name of the virus) “is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.” Its genetic composition is 96% identical to that of a virus from the Rhinolophus affinis bat, making them the obvious animal source from which the virus has jumped to humans.
The latest debate has focused on whether the virus was naturally transmitted to humans at the Huanan market in Wuhan, China, where bats were sold, or if it had somehow escaped from the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology, the maximum-security biosafety lab administered by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where strains of bat coronaviruses have been studied for years.
There is a chance that we will never know. Simple logic suggests that the probability of the virus jumping from a bat to one of the hundreds of thousands of bat-eaters would be much higher than the probability of a lab worker putting a vial with a virus in one’s pocket and then accidentally dropping it in a subway. This could have been easily accepted by everybody if China did not fuel conspiracy theories by erecting impenetrable barriers for visits of the Wuhan lab by foreign biosafety experts.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has repeatedly accused China of denying U.S. experts access to the Wuhan lab. Last week, the National Institutes of Health terminated funding that, in the last five years, provided support for the research of Shi Zhengli, the lead Wuhan Institute of Virology virologist. This prompted angry reactions from U.S. scientists who believed that a joint effort with China’s leading virologists was crucial for understanding COVID-19 and developing a cure.
Without a doubt, Shi, known in China and the West as “bat woman,” deserves support and praise for her 16-year work on hunting deadly viruses in bat caves. She was the first virologist who, at the beginning of January, sequenced the genome of the coronavirus and provided early warnings about its destructive potential to Chinese authorities. Her findings were dismissed, and she was silenced until late January, when the control over the virus was already lost and the Wuhan epidemic was on its way to becoming a pandemic that, by now, has killed more than 260,000 people worldwide.
However, if China denied visits to the Wuhan lab by U.S. biosafety experts, the NIH’s axing of its funding would be justified. The acceptance of site visits has always been a cornerstone of the compliance policy by U.S. government funding agencies on all research grants, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology should be no exception to this rule.
Trying to clarify the situation for the Committee of Concerned Scientists, I asked Shi whether the Wuhan lab was ready to accept visits by U.S. experts. She forwarded the question to Zhang Han, the head of the Wuhan Institute of Virology Research Planning Office. Zhang replied: “Due to the COVID-19, we are afraid that it may not be an appropriate time for us to receive foreign visitors at present. However, we may suggest that the NIH scientists or representatives could contact us directly, and we could discuss to receive them later one day.”
Given the historic scale of the pandemic and the importance of collaborative research to find a cure, it blows one’s mind that China shows no interest in inviting foreign scientists to share their expertise with Chinese researchers at the Wuhan lab. Secrecy surrounding the lab after its employees, together with medical doctors at Wuhan hospitals, were silenced earlier this year has already caused widespread anger inside and outside the country.
The best way for Chinese leaders to avoid further condemnation of their handling of the pandemic that brought havoc and death to the world is to allow U.S. and other foreign experts to come to Wuhan to work collaboratively with Chinese virologists on the origin of COVID-19.
Eugene M. Chudnovsky is a distinguished professor at the City University of New York and the co-chairman of the Committee of Concerned Scientists.
