Why do scientists care about the theory that COVID-19 leaked from the lab?

Scientists are more interested in the theory that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 leaked from the laboratory and asked for more investigations.

The COVID-19 pandemic first broke out in Wuhan city, Hubei province, China. Photo: Getty Images The United States and several countries are closer than ever to defeating COVID-19 thanks to progress in vaccination against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. But the world still does not know how this deadly virus appeared, and there is a growing opinion from the scientific community that it does not happen naturally. The US is stepping up calls for more research and warning about the risks of future pandemics. Washington is also more open to weighing the theory that a mistake or failure in a Chinese laboratory caused the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, the Chinese Government completely rejected this hypothesis and said that the dossier to trace the origin of the COVID-19 epidemic was closed. What’s new? According to CNN, a recent US intelligence report found that several researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill in November 2019 and were hospitalized – a new detail on the severity of the symptoms. disease in these scientists. It is not clear whether the researchers at that time had COVID-19 but the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) vehemently rejected the report, considering it a lie to promote the hypothesis that the virus leaked from the laboratory. . Scientists who worked for the WIV previously said the institute had nothing to do with COVID-19 disease until December 30, 2021. On May 24, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also denied the information that three Wuhan researchers were hospitalized before the outbreak of COVID-19 and affirmed that this information was “completely untrue”. Spokesperson Zhao Lijian confirmed that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was not exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus before December 30, 2019, and its staff so far have not been infected. Scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Photo: AFP Meanwhile, on May 25, speaking at the US Congress, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that the failure to fund previous research on Corona virus in bats in China. Quoc is a “negligence of duty”. According to Fauci, the US should have pursued to the place where the contact between animals and humans could lead to the spread of the virus between species. Dr. Fauci himself, the leading infectious disease expert in the US, said this week he did not believe the COVID-19 outbreak occurred spontaneously and prompted further investigation. A World Health Organization (WHO) adviser, Jamie Metzl, also said the leak hypothesis is possible, while scientists are “groping, creating and studying” the virus with the aim of vaccine development. “So I believe what could have happened was a leak, followed by a cover-up,” said Metzl, who served at the US State Department and the Atlantic Council during the US presidency. President Bill Clinton said. The conclusion is that further investigation is needed An in-depth study conducted by WHO in collaboration with the Government of China, published in March, explored the different possible origins of the COVID-19 epidemic and came to the conclusion that: although still It is not yet known how the disease originated, but it is likely that it spread to humans, either directly from bats, or more likely from an intermediate species that caught the virus from bats and then spread to humans. for human. Bats can be an intermediary that spreads the SARS-CoV-2 virus to humans. Photo: NPR The WHO report called the laboratory leak theory “extremely unlikely”, citing the fact that no laboratory staff in Wuhan were infected before December 2020 as an argument against this hypothesis. After the WHO report was published, its officials still called for an additional and public investigation from the Chinese side. Meanwhile, a newly released US intelligence report shows that laboratory workers of the Wuhan Institute of Virology have been sick since before December. According to WHO adviser Jamie Metzl, in the early stages of the outbreak of the disease. when China did not warn the world appropriately, Chinese officials blamed the transmission on an initial hotspot, a seafood market in Wuhan, which at this point was essentially Is not right. This expert said that there is a lot of evidence that the Chinese government initially tried to cover up the existence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. “Whatever the origin of the pandemic, the first month, when China was spending all its energy trying to cover things up rather than fixing the problem, allowed the fire in the furnace to cause a fire in the kitchen.” into a house fire and a worldwide fire,” said Metzl. The Wuhan Institute of Virology became the center of doubts about the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Photo: Getty Images A group of well-known and experienced scientists also criticized the WHO report for not taking seriously the hypothesis that the virus leaked from the laboratory. According to them, this hypothesis was refuted within just a few pages of a hundred-page report published by WHO. The scientists wrote in the journal Science: “We must seriously consider the contagion hypotheses in the wild and in the laboratory until we have enough data.” Fear of a recurrence of a pandemic These “closed doors” have also helped conspiracy theories expand. Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton has promoted the idea that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was purposefully created as a biological weapon. But there’s no concrete evidence to back up that claim, and experts still say it’s unlikely. Dr. Paul Offit, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, told CNN it’s unlikely the Wuhan lab manipulated the virus to make it more contagious. but “we have to find out” the truth. Dr. Offit said that the world needs to do something to prevent another pandemic. “What I know is that they [Trung Quốc] must allow this [điều tra mở về nguồn gốc dịch]“This is now the third pandemic to emerge in the past 20 years,” said Mr. Offit. First there was SARS 1, then there was MERS. I think we can assume we’re not done with this yet.”