Is SARS-CoV-2 a creation of a laboratory or has it escaped? Revealed to the world on January 7 by Chinese authorities, this new coronavirus has still not revealed the secret of its origins. There is nothing to filter China’s investigations into the matter, which leaves the door open to many hypotheses, including that of a handling error in a laboratory.
The subject took a diplomatic turn Thursday, April 16. “We are conducting a full investigation into everything we can learn about how this virus has spread, has infected the world”said American Foreign Minister Mike Pompeo. “There are obviously things that have happened that we don’t know”, engaged French President Emmanuel Macron in an interview with Financial times.
According to Washington Post, the US Embassy in Beijing alerted Washington two years ago to the need to help the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) strengthen its security measures. Renowned for its research on bat viruses, the WIV is equipped with a high security laboratory called “P4”, built with the help of France, where the most dangerous viruses are studied. Chinese scientists have assured that the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 does not match any of the coronaviruses in their collection. But, as the Washington Post, no one had access to their biobank or to the samples taken from the first Chinese patients.
Very rare, accidental contamination is part of the field of possibilities in any laboratory. “It is enough for a researcher to overturn a bottle. Despite the extractor hood, an aerosol is formed and he is infected without realizing it. At the end of the day, he leaves the laboratory, and contaminates his whole family and those he meets “, imagine Frédéric Tangy, researcher at the Institut Pasteur.
The hypothesis of a synthetic origin discarded
However, the hypothesis of a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2 is rejected. If it is indeed possible to create viruses from scratch, all the clues here point to a natural origin of this new infectious agent. To gain this certainty, scientists studied its history, much of which is written into its genes. This so-called “phylogenetic” approach, by comparing the SARS-CoV-2 genome with that of other known viruses, identifies its ancestors and makes assumptions about its trajectory.
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