Scientists ask for Wuhan Covid-19 records

China should allow investigators to conduct confidential interviews with Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists and to obtain laboratory records and biological samples, scientists say.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology in China's central Hubei province. Picture: AFP

China should allow world health investigators to conduct confidential interviews with Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists and to obtain laboratory records and biological samples from the earliest COVID-19 patients, according to an international group of independent scientists.

The group of 26 distinguished scientists has released an open letter to the World Health Organisation and its executive board outlining steps for a rigorous investigation into the origins of COVID-19 to determine whether the outbreak occurred from a laboratory accident.

The letter follows an extraordinary admission by WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that his team’s inquiry failed to thoroughly investigate whether the coronavirus had inadvertently leaked from a Wuhan laboratory.

“Although the team has concluded that a laboratory leak is the least likely hypothesis, this requires further investigation, potentially with additional missions involving specialist experts, which I am ready to deploy,” Dr Tedros said on March 31.

“The team also visited several laboratories in Wuhan and considered the possibility that the virus entered the human population as a result of a laboratory incident. However, I do not believe that this assessment was extensive enough. Further data and studies will be needed to reach more robust conclusions.”

Signatories to the letter include three Australian scientists: Colin Butler of the Australian National University, Rosemary McFarlane of the University of Canberra, and Nikolai Petrovsky of Flinders University.

The scientists applaud Dr Tedros for his “courageous defence of the scientific method”, but call for a change in the WHO joint mission’s objective.

The flawed WHO inquiry failed to adequately investigate a laboratory origin of COVID-19 and whether it had been created through risky gain-of-function experiments that were being conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“We recommend that the stated objective be reformulated as: to conduct a full scientific and forensic investigation into all possible origins of COVID-19, be it zoonotic or not,” the letter states. “Such a reformulation of the objective would ensure compliance with the scientific method of deriving the conclusion from data and facts, not the reverse.”