Coronavirus: Beijing cracks down on lab security

China’s National Health Commission has issued a draft of safety requirements for labs, saying they were designed to better regulate studies of the virus.

Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab. Picture: AFP

Security at Chinese virus labs is being tightened amid global allegations that COVID-19 originated from a leak at a lab in the central city of Wuhan.

Despite denials of any leaks, China’s National Health Commission has issued a draft of safety requirements for labs, saying they were designed to better regulate studies of the virus as the country continued to fight the outbreak.

The move comes as the city prepares to test all of Wuhan’s 11 million residents after a slight increase in cases. The city, which had spent months under lockdown, reported six new infections in one residential compound on Tuesday, ending a 35-day run of no new infections in the Hubei province.

That has led to a 10-day campaign to test all residents, with key workers such as healthcare and frontline staff being given priority.

As part of its security measures, the health commission said cultivation and animal infection tests using the virus would be conducted in more secure levels of laboratories, such as the one in Wuhan.

Scientists across the world have widely dismissed the suggestion the virus was man-made but speculation it accidentally leaked from the Wuhan laboratory has persisted, with Donald Trump claiming he has seen evidence to support that theory.

Intelligence services have been asked to investigate, with mobile phone activity among researchers in Wuhan said to be a key area of inquiry. The Wuhan lab, where security was managed with the help of French experts before they were thought to have been sidelined, is supposedly one of China’s most secure and had been studying coronaviruses in bats.

Shi Zhengli, a virologist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, told Scientific American magazine earlier this year that after a mysterious virus first emerged, she went through lab records to check for any mishandling of materials. She “breathed a sigh of relief” when the results on COVID-19 came back, showing no match with viruses her team had collected from bat caves.

The Chinese recommen­dations followed a recent interview in Science and Technology Daily, in which senior officials at the Wuhan Institute of Virology tried to assure the public the laboratory was secure.

“The lab has high-standard biosafety equipment (and) a strict biosafety management system, including a series of programs, files and manuals for projects, personnel, lab animals, disposal of waste, and management of infectious materials, which are to ensure the lab (operates) safely and effectively,” said Yuan Zhiming, director of Wuhan National Biosafety ­Laboratory, which is part of the ­institute.

The Times, AP