The Wuhan Institute of Virology has been at the center of concern since it was suspected that the Covid-19 virus first emerged from a leak in a laboratory deemed safe.
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Recent reports from the US claiming that the Covid-19 virus most likely originated in a laboratory belonging to the Chinese government has raised new questions.
Especially regarding the origins of the pandemic that first spread around the world three years ago.
Dr Robert Redfield, who served as director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2018 to 2021, told the US congress on Wednesday that he believes Covid-19 was most likely caused by an accidental laboratory leak in China.
Redfield’s allegations echo those of FBI chief Christopher Ray, who told US television station Fox News that “the FBI has for some time concluded that the pandemic most likely stemmed from a laboratory incident.”
Many scientists say there is no evidence to suggest the virus emerged from a laboratory leak and several other US government agencies have come to a different conclusion.
Therefore, there is no agreement on the origin of the Covid-19 outbreak in the US government or the world.
However, how easily can the virus leak from the laboratory? Has it happened before?
The plague that kills
In fact, a deadly viral outbreak once accidentally emerged from a lab in the center of a large city. One of the deadliest epidemics was smallpox.
Before smallpox was eradicated in 1977, the virus is believed to have killed more than 300 million people in the 20th century alone.
This explains why the diagnosis of smallpox in Janet Parker, a medical photographer from the University of Birmingham, in August 1978, came as a shock to many.
“The plague was feared; not only has it sparked panic in Birmingham, there has been panic at the government level and WHO because the disease is coming back,” said Professor Alasdair Geddes, who was consultant infectious diseases at East Birmingham Hospital at the time of the outbreak.
Smallpox, which was contagious and killed about a third of those who caught it, was being studied in university laboratories.
image source, Getty Images
A victim of smallpox whose face and arms were covered with freckles.
How did Parker, the photographer, get smallpox in the first place has not been answered.
A government report says transmission of the virus can occur via three routes – from airborne contact, personal contact, or through contact with contaminated equipment.
Thanks to isolation and quarantine measures, the only person who has contracted the contagion apart from Parker is his mother.
Parker died, while his mother recovered from a mild infection, but the plague – indirectly – claimed two more lives.
Parker’s father, Frederick, aged 77, died of a heart attack while in quarantine. The heart attack is thought to have occurred due to the stress that arose after her daughter had an illness.
As well as Frederick, Professor Henry Bedson – head of the Birmingham smallpox laboratory – committed suicide.
Tight security
image source, Getty Images
The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia – which US President Joe Biden visited – is one of the best laboratory facilities in the world.
After the smallpox outbreak, the authoritarians reassessed the danger of another laboratory leak and measures were implemented to reduce the number of locations harboring the virus.
Under a WHO agreement in 1979, there were two authorized laboratories that kept stocks of live smallpox virus. They are the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, USA, and the Vector laboratory in the Novosibirsk region of Siberia, Russia.
The two laboratories were chosen because they are considered the best and safest laboratories in the world, even though there have been terrible incidents that have occurred.
In 2014, CDC officials failed to properly inactivate an anthrax sample under study. This has the potential to endanger dozens of people (although none of them eventually contracted the disease).
In 2019, a gas explosion at Vector shattered windows in one building and sent one of the workers into intensive care with burns.
Even so, security forces stated that no biological contamination occurred as a result of the accident.
Deadly error
image source, Getty Images
Proteins called prions can create CJD which can damage the brain – the scans show the areas that are yellow and are infected.
Other incidents that took place in the high-security lab have exposed staff and residents living in the vicinity to contracting infectious diseases.
A research center in France tightened security after a scientist died 10 years after cutting his skin on a piece of equipment.
Emilie Jaumain died in 2019 at the age of 33 after being exposed to a protein substance (called a prion) that causes a disease called BSE in livestock and CJD in humans.
Although they were aware that Jaumain had contracted it, there was no vaccine or treatment that doctors could use to cure the disease.
Work errors at a biopharmaceutical factory in Lanzhou in northwestern China left more than 10,000 people infected with a dangerous pathogen.
Expired disinfectants are used to treat waste gases at sites that make veterinary vaccines to protect against Brucella bacteria.
As a result of the incident, the bacteria spread to workers at a neighboring research institute and then to thousands of people living in the city.
While rarely fatal, the disease has flu-like symptoms that can cause long-term problems. In fact, the bacteria was used as a biological weapon by the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
As a result, thousands of people needed medical treatment and were paid compensation money.
These cases are far from unique and various other mistakes have also caused workers and local residents to get infected from the laboratory.
Mysterious leak
There are also cases where the disease was spread from the laboratory but the cause was never found.
In 2021, a worker at a research site in Taipei, Taiwan, contracted Covid-19 while handling the virus.
An investigation found that oversight at the lab was “not stringent enough” but never said what went wrong.
There has been speculation that the transmission occurred as a result of inhaling the virus in the lab, or by removing protective gear in the wrong order.
