In March, a World Health Organization (WHO) report looking into the origin of Covid-19 found the virus likely originated in bats before it was transmitted to humans through another animal. At the same time, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also complained that the team did not receive sufficient data during its mission.
So where did the virus come from? From animals or is it man-made? How sensitive the topic is becomes clear when one follows the previous handling of Facebook: If someone previously claimed on Facebook that the virus was made by people and was spread intentionally or unintentionally, the social platform threatened with reprisals. The post was mostly deleted. But then last week came the change of heart. Reason: Doubts were voiced – not from supporters of conspiracy theories, but from the highest level in the US government.
Corona pandemic: New evidence for laboratory theory is pending
The renowned “Wall Street Journal” reported last week that in November 2019 three employees of the Institute of Virology in the Chinese city of Wuhan had to be treated in the hospital. The magazine relied on a US intelligence report. In the meantime, US President Joe Biden has announced an official investigation and angered China very much. The country’s communist leadership accused the US government of political motivation.
The Australian scientist in the WHO team defended the team’s results in an interview with the Australian broadcaster ABC. In his eyes, there is no new evidence for the laboratory theory, said virologist Dominic Dwyer. Dwyer spent four weeks in Wuhan earlier this year to work with the WHO international team to investigate the origins of the virus. “US intelligence agencies have been asked to show if they have any information that may be of use,” Dwyer said. However, they have not yet done that. “The fact that President Biden says he has received conflicting reports from his intelligence services suggests that there is no clear evidence.” He also stressed that it should not be underestimated how difficult it would be to obtain such evidence.
To clarify the origin of the coronavirus: “Diplomacy must improve”
According to Dwyer, the Wuhan authorities were “fairly open” with the team during the investigation. “The evidence we got, the questions we asked and the answers we got is like what I would expect if I were to conduct the same investigation in Australia or New Zealand or some similar place he said.
According to Dwyer, it can take “many years” to determine the origins of diseases and, in principle, this can only be achieved through cooperation. “We have had Ebola virus outbreaks in Africa for the past 40 years, but it is only in recent years that the origin of this virus has become apparent,” he said. The same goes for Sars, a disease that emerged in 2003. “It took ten or 15 years until the virus of origin was found in animals.” In order to clarify the origins of Covid-19, it is important to develop collaborations and to work openly and transparently with people. Therefore he would ask “that diplomacy improves”.
Respect and trust among researchers
In February Dwyer had already described the mission in Wuhan in a detailed report in the academic online magazine “The Conversation”. At the time, he reported that he and his team sat with the Chinese researchers for up to 15 hours a day. “This enabled us to build respect and trust in ways that couldn’t necessarily be zoomed in or emailed,” he wrote at the time.
As part of the mission, for example, the delegation met the man who was the first confirmed Covid-19 case on December 8, 2019 and is now healthy again, as well as the husband of a doctor who died of the coronavirus and left a small child behind. The expert group also spoke to the doctors who treated the early cases in the Wuhan hospitals.
“If we have evidence, then we can act”
In his report at the time, Dwyer stressed that he believed the virus was of animal origin. However, he also admitted: “The samples from bats in Hubei province and from wild animals throughout China have so far not revealed any Sars-CoV-2.” The source of the virus was blamed in Dwyer’s eyes “more of an aggravating event than necessarily a true ground zero”.
At the time, Dwyer called the laboratory theory “extremely unlikely” and justified this with the fact that on the one hand he had the feeling that the facility was “properly run” – for example, blood samples were routinely taken and stored by scientists and tested for signs of infection – and on the other hand with the fact that “no evidence of antibodies against the coronavirus was found”. In the current interview with the ABC, the researcher made it clear again that he first wanted to see evidence from the US secret service before changing his mind. “If we have that, then we can act,” he said.
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