World Health Organisation under fire for ruling out lab leak
The WHO did not provide “any evidence” for dismissing a Wuhan lab leak as the source of COVID, according to an Australian biosecurity expert.
NSW
Don't miss out on the headlines from NSW. Followed categories will be added to My News.
The World Health Organisation team investigating the origins of COVID-19 did not provide “any evidence” for dismissing a Wuhan lab as a source of the virus, which is still a “possibility” according to an Australian biosecurity expert.
UNSW Professor Raina MacIntyre said it was “expected” the WHO investigators would rule out the lab as where COVID-19 started, but that didn’t mean it was the case.
“(WHO) quickly dismissed possible unnatural origins, which was expected, given the political sensitivities, not just for China, but for the world,” she said.
“They do not provide any evidence for dismissing a lab leak.
“If a lab accident were the source, it would have huge ramifications globally, including for the regulation and practice of virology into the future.”
Prof MacIntyre raised concerns that one member of the WHO team was part of a non-profit organisation which provided funding for the bat virus research done at The Wuhan Institute of Virology prior to the pandemic.
“The virus may well have emerged in nature, but a lab accident is also a possibility, as the BSL4 lab in Wuhan was studying bat coronaviruses, including the virus found in the miners outbreak in 2012,” she said.
“Other biosecurity experts share my concerns.”
Prof MacIntyre said she was “surprised” the WHO team concluded the COVID-19 outbreak started in December 2019 and not earlier.
“There is now serological data from the US and Europe that shows the virus was already circulating in those regions by December 2019, which does not fit with the WHO postulate that it was not circulating widely prior to December,” she said.
“We have also heard about outbreaks of a flu like illness at the world military games in October in Wuhan, and also of possible ‘patient zeroes’ identified in mid November 2019, including in one study which we published.”
Prof MacIntyre said the WHO team did not reveal anything “substantially new” to what was already speculated by scientists about how the virus may have started in bats but then spread to humans through an intermediary.
“We already knew the bat, which carries the closest relative, is not in Hubei province, but in Yunnan, which is thousands of miles away,” she said.
“A similar virus caused severe pneumonia in miners in that area in 2012, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology had samples of that virus.”
Prof MacIntyre said the “speculation” from the WHO team that frozen foods may have carried the virus was “not clear”.
“In epidemic investigation it is important to study outlier data, and not to dismiss outliers that do not fit our beliefs,” she said.
‘PREMATURE’ TO RULE OUT WUHAN LAB LEAK
Just hours after being released, the World Health Organisation’s hastily compiled report into the origins of the coronavirus was slammed as an “unsatisfactory” whitewash designed to protect the Chinese government from embarrassment.
Speaking in China on Tuesday night, WHO investigators dismissed the possibility that the virus may have escaped from the controversial Wuhan Institute of Virology while leaving the door open to the possibility that the virus may have been imported from another country.
Peter Embarek, one of the scientists who made up the delegation, said finding the origin of COVID was a “work in progress”.
But he said COVID-19 most likely made the jump to humans through an unknown animal source.
The theory that the virus may have escaped from a local lab where scientists were known to be conducting “gain of function” tests on viruses similar to the coronavirus was dismissed out of hand as “extremely unlikely”, according to Embarek.
But more needs to be known before the possibility can be dismissed, according to a number of scientists and experts critical of China’s handling of the pandemic.
“It’s unsatisfactory, dismissing possibilities without providing evidence for why,” said vaccine researcher Prof Nikolai Petrovski, who is the Director of Endocrinology at Flinders University Medical Centre in South Australia.
The report “says we don’t want to investigate further the possibility of a lab accident, but they don’t give any justification why,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
“They seem to have signed up to the Chinese government’s position, which is that this didn’t come from China, and that it might have come in to China on frozen food packaging. Why are they saying that and what is the evidence?”
“We are entitled to the facts they are using to dismiss different possibilities, and to know if they have dealt with the question marks around how the virus got this feature or that feature.”
Others were similarly sceptical.
But this was not enough for many, who remain suspicious of China and the Chinese Communist Party’s handling of the pandemic.
“The WHO mission is compromised because Beijing is choreographing the team’s visit. And the delegation includes some China apologists,” academic and author Clive Hamilton, who has written a number of books detailing the efforts of the Chinese Communist Party to subvert democracy in Australia and around the world, told The Daily Telegraph.
“It already looks like the WHO delegation is following Beijing’s script.”
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Chinese government has tightly controlled information about the virus that could be embarrassing to the authoritarian regime, and suggested COVID might have been brought to Wuhan by visiting American military athletes or even on the surface of imported frozen food packaging.
China has also sought to punish Australian exporters by imposing billions of dollars worth of trade sanctions in retaliation for the Morrison government’s pressing for an investigation into the pandemic.
Nationals Senator Matt Canavan has lashed the process, suggesting that any report into the virus delivered on Chinese soil was immediately compromised.
“It’s a bit hard to believe the conclusions of this report when if the WHO had made certain findings, they may have been detained before getting out of the country,” he said.
“If journalists expressing views aren’t safe in China, how can you expect health officials to be safe either?”
Other Coalition MPs were just as scathing, with one telling The Daily Telegraph it was “premature” to rule out the lab hypothesis “before they have found clear evidence of an alternative cause”.
From the start, the WHO’s investigation has been marred by controversy, with the Chinese government first delaying authorisation for the visit, and then tightly managing access for the international delegation.
Despite the WHO’s report, the theory that Covid-19’s origins lie behind the gates of the secretive Wuhan Institute of Virology have gained currency in recent days after being widely rubbished as a Donald Trump-style conspiracy theory when The Daily Telegraph reported on it last year.
Last week, the reliably progressive and anti-Trump Washington Post published a blistering editorial saying that “the possibility of a laboratory accident or leak … must be investigated”.
“Wuhan, with a population of 11 million, is a major transportation hub and a center of virus studies in China, with at least six facilities with BSL-3 laboratories for handling infectious agents. Published papers show that some of these institutions have been very active in coronavirus research,” the paper’s editorial board wrote.
“The most active is the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where (researcher) Shi Zhengli leads a research team that has extensively studied and experimented on bat coronaviruses that are very similar to the one that ignited the global pandemic.”
And, soon after the WHO handed down its report, former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News “I continue to know that there was significant evidence that this may well have come from that laboratory.”
More Coverage
Originally published as World Health Organisation under fire for ruling out lab leak
Invitation only: Minns among the high-flyers
The latest ministerial disclosures revealed Premier Chris Minns to be the only pollie to receive an invite to Beyond, Virgin Australia’s invitation-only airline lounge.
How Julia Zemiro upgraded in the Southern Highlands
Popular comedian, actor and TV presenter Julia Zemiro and her partner, real estate agent Carsten Prien, have found a buyer for their Bowral home as they upgrade in the Southern Highlands.