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Scientists and spy agencies have been searching for years for the origin of the coronavirus. Conclusive evidence is difficult to come by, and the country’s intelligence officials are divided.
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By Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Benjamin Mueller and Carl Zimmer
WASHINGTON – Long after the emergence of the covid pandemic in Wuhan, the origin of the coronavirus remains a subject of intense clinical scrutiny and even more intense political debate.
A team of researchers added fuel to the bonfire by presenting knowledge at a World Health Organization assembly that suggested a wild animal known as a raccoon dog was being sold at the same stall at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, where researchers discovered lines of the coronavirus.
Scientists have warned that raccoon dogs may have served simply as an intermediate host for the virus, allowing its spread on the market.
The move comes less than 3 weeks after reports that the Department of Energy had concluded, albeit with “low confidence,” that an accidental lab leak at Wuhan’s maximum likely caused the coronavirus pandemic.
Scientists who have studied the genetics of the virus and the patterns of its spread say the maximum likely cause is that the virus passed from living mammals to humans, a phenomenon known as “zoonotic overflow,” in the Huanan market, where the first cases of Covid-19 gave the impression in 2019.
But other scientists say circumstantial evidence indicates the virus escaped from a lab, most likely from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which had a wealth of experience researching the coronavirus. Control and Prevention strengthened its biosecurity practices.
Government agencies have been analyzing the origin of the pandemic since 2020, but remain divided on the maximum likely explanation. Most are still in favor of overflow. None of them replaced their findings after seeing the Energy Ministry’s findings, officials said.
The debate is politically charged. The lab leak theory gained traction among Republicans in the spring of 2020 after President Donald J. Trump, who has used inflammatory language to blame China for the pandemic, stuck to the idea.
Many Democrats were not convinced by the hypothesis. Some say it was an overflow, and others think there might never be enough intelligence to draw a conclusion.
But outside of politics, experts say understanding what caused a public health crisis that killed nearly seven million people could help researchers and governments save the next one.
Here’s what we know and don’t know about the origins of the coronavirus.
It’s difficult to pinpoint the origin of viruses, but China has compounded this challenge by making it very difficult to collect evidence.
When Chinese researchers arrived to collect samples from the Huanan market, it had been shut down and disinfected because several other people connected to it had fallen from what would later be identified as Covid. There were no animals left alive.
Some scientists also say China has provided an incomplete picture of early covid cases. snapshot of the propagation.
Experts have tried to paint around the holes in the data.
The scientists looked at cases of hospitalized patients before the call was made for doctors to look for links to the market. They also mapped the locations of the first Covid cases in Wuhan, adding other people who were first connected to the market and those who were not, and discovered what they say are symptoms that the virus has begun to spread in the market.
Some of those scientists studied maps of where researchers discovered the virus in the Huanan market, adding walls, floors and other surfaces, and found that those samples were clustered in a market domain where animals were sold. The raccoon dog’s DNA was obtained from one of those posts.
And genetic analyses from the early stages of the pandemic, according to some scientists, suggest that the virus has spread to others who run or buy food at the market on at least two occasions.
Other scientists have questioned whether studies like these can pinpoint the origin of an ad with great confidence. They believe, for example, that evidence of two distinct market outcomes may also be evidence that the virus evolves as it spreads from one user to another.
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Some scholars have also argued that, despite all the attention paid to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, not enough attention has been paid to another study site in the city, the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention. This center is much closer to Huanan. Market.
On March 14, some of the scientists who had studies targeting the Huanan market submitted more data. They said their new findings were consistent with the overflow hypothesis.
While browsing a database in which coronavirus genetic sequences are shared, researchers discovered that Chinese researchers had quietly uploaded their Jan. 1, 2020, study data to the Huanan market, after a wait of more than three years.
The knowledge included all genetic sequences collected through researchers, not just those from coronaviruses. And it included DNA from a wild species called a raccoon dog, researchers told the World Health Organization.
This conclusion contradicts the Chinese authorities’ claims that wild animals were being sold in the Huanan market.
Raccoon dogs are vulnerable to coronavirus infections. Two decades ago, they would possibly have served as an intermediate host for the coronavirus: the one that caused the SARS outbreak.
The discovery of the raccoon dog’s DNA on the market, if confirmed, would not be definitive proof that the animals were brought to the market that housed the coronavirus that triggered the pandemic. But the researchers found it surprising that the raccoon dog’s DNA came from a stall. who also tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid.
After scientists discovered the raccoon dog’s DNA, the newly uploaded images were deleted from the database. It is not known why this happened. The scientists are preparing a report of their findings.
In October, Republicans on the Senate Health Committee released an investigation into the origins of the pandemic that stated it was “most likely the result of an investigation-related incident,” though they acknowledged that the conclusion was “not intended to be determinative. “
Many of his claims echoed House Republicans, who held a hearing in early March in which they laid out the case for a laboratory leak theory.
The Republicans’ report highlighted what its authors described as holes in the theory of the origins of herbs, such as “persistent biosecurity issues” at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
However, the report relied largely on existing public evidence, rather than new or classified information, and produced no evidence showing that the Wuhan institute stockpiled any viruses that could have become the coronavirus that causes covid, with or without clinical tinkering.
Speculation of a lab leak is bolstered, according to the report, by the absence of published evidence that SARS-CoV-2 circulates in animals before the pandemic. Virus samples taken from refrigerators, counters and other surfaces at the Huanan market were genetically similar to human samples, suggesting the virus is transmitted through humans and not animals, he said.
But some experts said the inability to locate an inflamed animal proved nothing, as China shut down the market and killed all the animals before they could be examined.
In 2018, before the pandemic, the Wuhan Institute and its partners, plus EcoHealth Alliance, a U. S. -funded think tank, were able to participate in the Wuhan Institute. The U. S. Department of Defense requested an investment from the Department of Defense to collect coronaviruses with novel features that would make them highly transmissible in humans. .
The group’s allocation was never funded. But the Senate Republican report noted that the coronavirus has similar characteristics to what researchers were looking for. This persuaded some scientists that a lab leak was possible. The report speculated that the virus possibly escaped, most likely by infecting a researcher who had taken it out of the lab.
The National Institutes of Health paid for some of the EcoHealth Alliance’s work in Wuhan, but NIH officials have continually said that viruses studied with American taxpayer money have no genetic similarity to the one that causes covid. But Dr. Lawrence A. Tabak, acting director of the NIH, testified at a recent congressional hearing that he didn’t know what other paintings the Wuhan institute was making.
In May 2021, several months after taking office, President Biden directed the nation’s intelligence agencies to conduct a 90-day investigation into the cause of the pandemic. The findings of this review were published in August 2021 and reaffirmed what agencies had done in the past. he said: the herbal origins theory and the laboratory leak theory were plausible.
At the time, Biden called on China to be more transparent about what led to the emergence of the virus there in late 2019.
The Energy Ministry’s recent conclusion that the pandemic occurred through a lab leak is based on data that is not publicly available, so it’s unclear what explained the change. But the department’s use of the term “low confidence” indicates that its point of certainty is not high.
The FBI, however, concluded with “moderate confidence” that the virus came out of a lab.
Four other intelligence agencies and the National Intelligence Council have concluded, with little confidence, that the maximum maximum of the virus likely arose through herbal transmission. The CIA, the country’s main spy agency, has taken a stand and remains undecided.
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