WHO in probe of Wuhan coronavirus lab

A World Health Organisation delegation is investigating whether the coronavirus emerged from somewhere other than the seafood market in Wuhan.

One of the investigators travelling with the WHO Global Study of the Origins of SARS-CoV-2 team is Australian microbiologist Dominic Dwyer. Picture: John Appleyard

A World Health Organisation delegation is investigating whether the coronavirus emerged from somewhere other than the seafood market in Wuhan that has been widely considered the source of the original outbreak of COVID-19.

A theory that the virus may have escaped from a laboratory is not being ruled out by investigators who are travelling to China as part of a WHO team of experts to try to determine the origin of COVID-19.

One of the investigators travelling with the WHO Global Study of the Origins of SARS-CoV-2 team is Australian microbiologist Dominic Dwyer.

Professor Dwyer said the delegation would examine the genetic sequences of early virus cases, as well as investigate the work being done by Chinese scientists attempting to understand the virus.

“This is really about looking at the kind of work that needs to be done to understand the origins of the virus,” said Professor Dwyer, a clinical professor of Medicine at the University of Sydney.

“That sort of work falls into three main areas. One is understanding the potential animal transmission because we know that, historically, most viruses come from animals including bats, sometimes via an intermediary, into humans.

The other area is around the early stages of the viral infection in Wuhan. We know that the virus came through the marketplace in Wuhan and then spread into the hospitals and community and took off. That marketplace was clearly an amplifying event.

“What we don’t know was where the virus was before then. There are a few people who were infected before the marketplace outbreak, so that is telling us that there was some movement of the virus in humans prior to that, but where that happened is unknown.

“So was it just in Wuhan? Was it in neighbouring areas in that province or indeed elsewhere in China, or even elsewhere in the region for that matter?

“The third area we’ll be investigating is around what happened in the hospital envir­onment in the early stages of the epidemic and what was happening in the laboratories that look after those hospitals and the ­research laboratories.”

Professor Dwyer said China was providing access to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has been the subject of scrutiny because it was investigating coronavirus in the laboratory prior to the outbreak.

Asked whether it was possible that the virus escaped from the lab, Professor Dwyer said: “I’ve got an open mind about this sort of thing. Historically we know that the most likely thing is from animals into humans. That happens all the time with viruses. But that doesn’t mean you discount the other alternatives.

“We certainly won’t identify patient zero, but I think getting an understanding of what happened prior to the outbreak getting going will be important.”