American epidemiologist Ralph Baric, one of the world’s leading experts on coronavirus, assured the United States House of Representatives that “it cannot be ruled out” that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, could have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the pandemic began, which, according to official figures, caused at least six million deaths worldwide.
Baric gave six-hour testimony before two Republican committees investigating the origin of the coronavirus. The testimony was not under oath, although Baric was required by federal law to answer truthfully. The scientist is one of the leading coronavirus experts in the United States and currently directs the Baric Laboratory at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Gillings School of Global Public Health, which specializes in emerging infections and how they Viruses move from one species to another and cause disease.
In his statement, which had not been made public and was revealed this Wednesday by Vanity Fair, Baric recalled his collaboration with Shi Zhengli, the main coronavirus researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), nicknamed “bat woman” by her pioneers. studies on coronaviruses from these animals.
The collaboration was carried out at WIV in 2015, the same year that Baric, a UNC epidemiologist specializing in microbiology and immunology, published a study that anticipated exactly what would happen five years later with SARS-CoV-2.
The collaboration with Shi consisted of revolutionary research that resulted in the creation of an artificial virus or “chimera” capable of infecting human cells. The research highlighted the threat of bat coronaviruses and aimed to gather useful information for developing vaccines and drugs.
The research, funded in part by the American EcoHealth Alliance, however also raised safety concerns. The concerns were such that the Obama administration decided to eliminate funding for risk research, called GOF (gain of function), such as those carried out with viruses, since they can increase the danger, the level of contagion and the number of germs of the world. A leak from a GOF research laboratory is extremely dangerous; At the same time, it is there where vaccines against these microorganisms can be found.
In fact, there were serious concerns about the WIV’s security practices, Baric testified before Congress. The scientist said that he had specifically warned Shi Zhengli about the inadequacy of biosafety measures in the laboratory, recommending that he move the research to a biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) laboratory, something Shi did not comply with.
For this reason, Baric emphasized the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 could have originated from a laboratory accident.
“You can’t rule it out… You just can’t,” he said.
Baric, who since the 1990s has warned about how the CoV family can jump from animals to humans, told the Committees that, from his early days working with zoonotic coronaviruses, he always understood that there was a real possibility, although “rare”, that one could be infectious to humans. “And if that’s your hypothesis, then you do it under BSL-3,” he said. “So I kind of set the standard in America.”
But the WIV, he said, operated with a less stringent set of biosafety protocols. “Their regulations clearly state that they do not consider the cultivation of bat viruses in BSL-2 to be a biosafety issue,” he said. “Zhengli Shi also confirmed this verbally to me in a meeting.”
As Baric told congressional investigators, Shi’s previous work was “very vague about security conditions. “They said they followed Chinese regulations.” But in two subsequent documents, Baric said, “they stated that they were doing the cultivation work under BSL-2… And then they continued like this even until September 2020, which I found irresponsible.”
Baric also admitted that while he considers a natural transmission from animals to humans more likely, he does not agree with the widely spread theory that the virus jumped from animals to people at the Huanan seafood wholesale market.
“Clearly, the market was a conduit for expansion,” he indicated, suggesting that COVID-19 was already circulating among the human population months before being detected in said market. “Is that where it started? I don’t believe it”.
US intelligence agencies remain divided over the origin of SARS-CoV-2, and China’s lack of transparency only deepens the mystery.
Baric highlighted the need for access to more detailed information to resolve these unknowns.
“If they had access to the laboratory notebooks, if they had access to the security records of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, if they had access to the sequence databases, the level of security they would have would be higher,” he said. “Definitely”.
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