The controversy surrounding the origins of COVID-19 centers on the possibility of a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). A New York Times article highlights the lack of transparency from China regarding investigations into this theory, despite a recent admission from a top Chinese scientist acknowledging that the government took the lab leak theory seriously. Professor James Wood from the University of Cambridge stated that genomics cannot definitively determine whether the virus originated from wildlife or a laboratory accident. WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus emphasized the need to move beyond geopolitical disputes in understanding pandemics.
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China investigated Covid lab leak claims, says top scientist
A top Chinese scientist has said China investigated whether Covid-19 might have originated in a Wuhan laboratory — the first admission from a senior official that Beijing took the so-called lab leak theory seriously after years of heated denials.
“The government organised something,” he said in the BBC interview. “That lab was double-checked by the experts in the field,”
“Genomics cannot distinguish whether the virus transmitted to humans via traded wildlife in [Wuhan’s] Huanan Seafood Market or through a laboratory accident, where a laboratory worker was inadvertently infected from a sample they were processing,” said Professor James Wood, head of veterinary medicine at the University of Cambridge.“In reality, it may never be possible to know with confidence how the Covid-19 virus entered the human population,” Wood added.
Closing the World Health Assembly’s annual meeting in Geneva on Tuesday, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus appealed for an end to geopolitical arguments about pandemics. “Covid-19 has taught us that pathogens have no regard for the lines humans draw on maps,” he said.