Did Covid-19 escape a lab? Scientists no longer immune to the idea

We know this all started with a bat. We know it ended with a pandemic. What we don’t know is what happened in between.

A scientist at the Wuhan lab blamed for the coronavirus pandemic. Picture: Supplied

We know this all started with a bat. We know it ended with a pandemic. What we don’t know is what happened in between.

Who was the first human to provide a home for Sars-CoV2? And, the question scientists are finding the courage to ask: were they standing by a bat or by a freezer door?

Did the three members of the Wuhan virology laboratory who, we learnt on Sunday, went to hospital in November 2019, do so because they had Covid-19?

This is not merely a scientific question nor a geopolitical one. It is also a personal one: the answer will explain much of the past year for every human being.

Perhaps that is why the issue has become so toxic among virologists – why so often scientists are only prepared to talk about a “lab escape” off the record.

Sharri Markson. Picture: Adam Yip

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Last February there appeared to be a consensus. In a letter to The Lancet, two dozen researchers wrote: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin.”

“Lab origins” was an idea for cranks.

The case for “natural spillover” is simple. For decades virologists had warned that a pandemic was inevitable. When it came, they said, it would arrive at the nexus of humans, animals and travel. Nowhere was that more worrying than in China.

In parts of the country people still hunt bats by spearing them on cave ceilings, splattering blood below. A few miles away are airports that can take them across the world.

Add to that the fact there’s no good evidence that the genome of the virus has been tampered with, and we do not need wild theories about laboratories.

This aerial view shows the P4 laboratory, left, on the campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province. Picture: AFP

However, scientists have begun to make the countercase. Yes, it is highly plausible this virus is of natural origin. Is it not still noteworthy that all this occurred on the doorstep of a virology laboratory that studies bat coronaviruses, in a secretive country?

There does not need to be malevolence or genetic manipulation. All that is needed is an accident at a medium-security laboratory.

Private comments are slowly becoming public. Anthony Fauci, the doctor leading the US pandemic response, said it was possible the virus came from a laboratory.

A guard wearing a protective gear is seen at the entrance of the Hubei provincial centre for disease control and prevention as members of the WHO team investigating the origins of the Covid-19 coronavirus, visit. Picture: AFP

Last week a group of scientists wrote to the journal science calling for a “transparent, objective, data-driven” investigation into laboratory spillover”.

Would that find the answer? Here is the problem: you can open up blood banks to look for antibodies, you can open up viral databases to look for genetic congruences. The chances are high you will find nothing.

China can rightly say it is frustrating, being asked to prove a negative. But, its critics counter, it has not shown it is very motivated to try.

The Times