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A bat virus specialist known as China’s “bat woman” and her laboratory in Wuhan have become the center of a furious blame game between the United States and China for the source of the coronavirus outbreak.
United States President Donald Trump insists that he has seen evidence that the coronavirus was leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the city where the outbreak began in January.
But his claims clash with the message from his country’s scientific and intelligence communities, as well as some of the health experts leading the fight against coronavirus in the United States.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has not responded to the allegations, but Beijing sometimes indicated that the source of the virus was a wet animal market in Wuhan, where wild animals were sold as delicacies. It has also allowed diplomats to support other theories that lack evidence, such as one that claims that the CIA planted the virus in Wuhan last year.
Chinese state media have also responded, accusing Mike Pompeo, the United States Secretary of State who has publicly supported and encouraged Trump’s claims, of “spreading a political virus.” Global Times, a nationalist tabloid, has asked US officials to reveal their evidence or to stop making wild accusations.
None of this has ended the escalation of hostile rhetoric, which has largely developed in clashes between scientists, journalists, and the Trump administration on Twitter.
What is the Wuhan Institute of Virology?
The institute was created in 1956 as a microbiology laboratory, one of the first of its kind in the country after the communist takeover of China seven years earlier.
As a level 4 biosecurity facility, the highest level of security in China, it is allowed to handle the world’s deadliest viruses. Scientists at the facility are known to have created hybrid versions of a bat coronavirus that could infect human cells.
Nature, the scientific journal, published an article in 2015 that raised questions about the level of risk associated with such research. This has contributed to theories that the virus could have originated as a laboratory leak.
Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, noted in the article that the new virus “grows remarkably well” in human cells and “if the virus escaped, no one could predict the trajectory.”
However, the magazine added a note to the report in March this year that says: “We are aware that this story is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the new coronavirus that caused Covid-19 was designed. There is no evidence that this is true; Scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus. ”
Who is China’s “baton woman”?
Shi Zhengli was probably not looking for a place at the center of a poisonous discussion between Washington and Beijing. Instead, the 55-year-old scientist had been looking to make a mark on bat-related virology, an area to which he has dedicated his life.
For years, Shi has collected bat coronavirus strains. In 2004, he identified a reservoir for such diseases in bat caves in southern China’s Yunnan Province, and has been at the forefront of research on how viruses like Sars may have jumped into humans.
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The coronavirus outbreak in the city where she lives and works quickly put her in the limelight. Since then, she has emphasized that she did not believe the virus had originated in her laboratory. However, online rumors over the past week suggested that she had “defected” from China and brought confidential documents to Paris, apparently to reveal the source of the outbreak.
The Financial Times was unable to reach Ms. Shi for comment. However, she has posted photos of herself in China online and has rejected claims that she left the country.
Is there credible evidence that the virus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan?
Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The US, who has appeared alongside Trump at many press meetings during the crisis, told National Geographic magazine that the evidence is “very, very strongly inclined towards this. It could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated.”
The US intelligence community. USA He has also ruled out any possibility that the virus was created by man, saying he agrees with the scientific consensus. But he continues to investigate whether the outbreak was the result of an accident in a Wuhan laboratory or human contact with infected animals.
Anthony Fauci, left, has appeared regularly at press meetings of United States President Donald Trump, and says the evidence does not suggest that the man-made coronavirus © REUTERS
Edward Holmes, an Australian virologist who helped map and share the virus’ genetic sequence, said there was “no evidence” that Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19 in humans, originated in a laboratory in Wuhan. .
He said the closest known relative of Sars-Cov-2 was a bat virus called RaTG13, which was in fact kept at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But he added that the bat virus, which was sampled in Yunnan province, had a level of divergence in the coronavirus genome sequence equivalent to at least 20-50 years of evolutionary change. Therefore, it does not believe that it was responsible for Covid-19.
Professor Holmes, who in 2014 visited the Wuhan Live Animal Market, which the Chinese authorities said was the source of the disease, argues that the most likely source of the virus is that it jumped from wildlife to new hosts. In an April article written jointly with a Shanghai colleague, he said that the emergence and rapid spread of Covid-19 meant “a perfect epidemiological storm.”
“The way humans live today is perfect for pandemics to occur,” he said.
Editor’s Note
The Financial Times is making key coronavirus coverage free to read to help everyone stay informed. Find the latest here.
