The head of the World Health Organization group that investigated the origins of the novel coronavirus says they didn’t get “hard facts or detailed data” on the work done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Peter Ben Embarek, an expert on animal diseases and food safety, also stressed that he remains skeptical of the lab leak hypothesis but that it is “definitely not off the table.”
China has worked to thwart investigations into the origins of the virus, which turned into a pandemic that has killed 2.55 million people worldwide. A WHO joint investigation with China was conducted in January and early February.
Embarek, who led that mission, said in an online discussion last week that WHO had not gotten key information about the research at the Wuhan lab, though he downplayed the likelihood COVID-19 originated there. He was speaking with Dale Fisher, who was part of the WHO team which visited Wuhan in February 2020.
“I take it you found no research into SARS-CoV-2 in any of the labs. It’s hard to imagine how it could leak if they don’t even have it,” Fisher said.
“Exactly, but of course, as I said, we didn’t do an audit of any of these labs, so we don’t really have hard facts or detailed data on the work done,” Embarek said. “But from what was presented both for and against these hypotheses — mind you, those claiming that it can only be due to a laboratory accident or leak have not been able to put any pieces of evidence on the table, so it’s very difficult to act and plan forward with on claims.”
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The Chinese government denies the coronavirus originated in the Wuhan lab and has cast doubt on the idea that it originated in China, calling for investigations in other countries too. China has pushed the hypothesis that the coronavirus may have been originally brought into the country on frozen foods, a claim which Embarek views with skepticism, and Chinese diplomats also have pushed baseless claims that it started with the U.S. military.
Matthew Pottinger, former President Donald Trump’s deputy national security adviser, said in February that “if you weigh the circumstantial evidence, the ledger on the side of an explanation that says that this resulted from some kind of human error, it far outweighs the side of the scale that says this was some natural outbreak.” He added, “We have very strong reason to believe that the Chinese military was doing secret classified animal experiments in that same laboratory, going all the way back to at least 2017. We have good reason to believe that there was an outbreak of flu-like illness among researchers working in the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the fall of 2019.”
In early February, Embarek said the possibility that the novel coronavirus may have escaped from the Wuhan lab didn’t merit further inquiry. Days later, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reversed that by saying more study was needed.
While in Wuhan, Embarek announced WHO considered four main hypotheses: direct transmission from animal to human, transmission through an intermediate species, transmission through frozen foods, and a “laboratory-related incident.” He said a jump from animal to another animal to humans was most likely and an accidental release was “extremely unlikely.”
Fisher told Embarek that “you seemed to take off a lab breach — you seemed to take that off the table.” He asked, “Did you really confirm that there was no such SARS-COV-2 virus in any of the labs, there were no sick staff — how much did you go into that?”
“We had discussions, and we had visits to all the labs of relevance in Wuhan, so we saw a few of them, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Embarek said, adding that “the laboratory accident is part of our hypothesis, we have been discussing it openly with our counterparts, which I think is the first time that this has been possible. So that in itself is good progress.”
Embarek said it was still one of the four hypotheses being explored, though not as a high priority, and repeated twice that it is “not off the table.”
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan has criticized China for blocking COVID-19 data but declined to stand by the declassified U.S. intelligence.
“I remember when — our mission 12 months ago — when we were over there, we were actually pretty pleased with the access, but actually no country would let you — would let a group of foreigners wander around all their hospitals … so again, I think there’s a bit of a hard rap for China not just letting you do anything, go anywhere,” Fisher said. “But were you pleased with the access?”
“Of course, as scientists, you always want more data than you see and have, and each time you see data and each time you analyze data and each time you see the result of new studies, you want to dig more into it,” Embarek replied, adding that “as you said it’s not always possible or feasible to expect that the data will just be put on the table — in particular raw data that includes sensitive information, private information, et cetera, or that are scattered in different institutions or two different levels of administrations and agencies, so it’s a complicated situation.” Embarek added: “But of course we can and we will, and we want more data.”
Embarek also admitted, “We all had that initial reaction a year ago about the lab hypothesis, including the staff in the labs we visited — they told us themselves, well, that was, of course, the first reaction they had — ‘Is this coming from my lab or not?’ So it was a natural reaction at the time.”
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Shi Zhengli, the head of the coronavirus research effort at the Wuhan lab known as “batwoman” for her bat disease work, last year admitted asking herself, “Could they have come from our lab?” Shi told Chinese state television that “there could not possibly have been a lab leak.” Viruses have escaped from Chinese labs before.
Embarek claimed that “we were not there as an international investigation or audit into particular sites or particular events in China, which would have been a totally different mission.”
