Reviewing The Origins Of COVID-19, Is It From Animal Or Laboratory In Wuhan?

Illustration (Photo: Antara)

JAKARTA - Scientists are revisiting the main mystery of COVID-19, where, when, and how did the virus that causes the disease to originate?

Two competing theories are that the virus jumped from an animal, possibly a bat, to a human, or the virus originated in a virology laboratory in Wuhan, China. The following is what is known about the origin of the virus.

Why is the Wuhan Laboratory in the spotlight?

The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is a high-security research facility that studies pathogens in nature that have the potential to infect humans with new deadly and exotic diseases.

The laboratory has done extensive work on bat-borne viruses since the 2002 SARS-CoV-1 international outbreak, which started in China, killed 774 people worldwide. The search for its origins led several years later to the discovery of a SARS-like virus in bat caves in southwest China.

The institute is collecting genetic material from wildlife for experiments in a Wuhan laboratory. Researchers are experimenting with live viruses in animals to measure human susceptibility.

To reduce the risk of pathogens escaping accidentally, facilities should implement strict safety protocols, such as protective clothing and super-air filtration. But not even the strictest of measures can eliminate such risks.

Why are some scientists suspicious of the Wuhan Laboratory?

For some scientists, the release of dangerous pathogens through reckless laboratory workers is a plausible hypothesis about how the pandemic started and warrants investigation.

The Wuhan laboratory, China's leading SARS research facility, is not far from the Huanan Seafood Market, which at the start of the health crisis was said to be the most likely place for the animal-to-human transmission of the virus.

The market is also the location of the first known where COVID-19 spread. Their proximity immediately aroused suspicion, fueled by the failure to identify wild animals infected with the same lineage of the virus so far and exacerbated by the Chinese government's refusal to allow the laboratory leak scenario to be fully investigated.

Scientists and others have developed hypotheses based on general concerns about the risks involved in laboratory research of live viruses, clues in the viral genome, and information from research by institute researchers.

Although the Wuhan laboratory scientists said they had no trace of SARS-CoV-2 in their inventory at the time, 24 researchers sent a letter to the World Health Organization (WHO) urging a rigorous and independent investigation. The WHO's first such mission to China this year failed to be investigated further, they wrote.

The US State Department fact note released prior to the WHO mission during the Trump administration, alleges, without evidence, that some WIV researchers had fallen ill with symptoms consistent with COVID-19 or a common seasonal illness prior to the first publicly confirmed cases in December 2019.

A story by Nicholas Wade in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, says that laboratory scientists experimenting on viruses sometimes insert sequences of so-called "furin enzyme sites" into their genomes in ways that make the virus more infective.

David Baltimore, the Nobel Prize-winning virologist quoted in the article, said when he looked at the sequences in the SARS-CoV-2 genome, he felt he had found compelling evidence for the origin of the virus.

What are the arguments for animal-to-human transmission?

Many scientists believe that natural origins are more likely and see no scientific evidence to support the laboratory leak theory. Kristian G. Andersen, a scientist at Scripps Research who has carried out extensive research on the coronavirus, Ebola, and other pathogens that can be transmitted from animals to humans, said similar genome sequences occur naturally in the coronavirus and are unlikely to be manipulated in the manner described by Baltimore for experiments.

Scientists who favor the hypothesis of the origins of nature rely largely on history. Some of the deadliest new diseases of the past century have been traced to human interactions with wildlife and domestic animals, including the first epidemics of SARS (bats), MERS-CoV (camels), Ebola (bat or non-human primates), and Nipah virus ( bat).

While the source of the animal has not been identified so far, evidence from stalls in the wildlife section of a wildlife market in Wuhan after the outbreak tested positive, suggesting either infected animals or humans handling the animals.

Any new information that can be used to prove one of these theories?

The scientists' March 4 letter to WHO refocused attention on the laboratory leak scenario, but provided no new evidence. Nor has any definite evidence of the origin of nature emerged.

US President Joe Biden on May 26 said his national security staff did not believe there was enough information to judge one theory as more likely than another. He instructs intelligence officials to gather and analyze information that can approach a definitive conclusion and report back within 90 days. This was reported by Antara from Reuters, Friday, May 28.