April 17, 2020–A great and tragic mystery of 2020 is the origin of the COVID-19 virus that is sweeping the world with sickness and death. Some researchers point to a seafood market in Wuhan. Others say it could have started in a Chinese lab in Wuhan. Most certainly, it came from bats. But how did it jump to humans?
From Wuhan to the World
To date, the COVID-19 virus that has infected over 2 million people worldwide and killed 149,000 people.
Of the first 309 confirmed cases in China, 270 cases were confirmed in Wuhan. Of the first 41 patients hospitalized in Wuhan with the virus, 27 of them, 66 percent, had a connection to a food and wild animal market.
Wholesale Food Market
As early as December 2019, reports from China pointed to the connection to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.
China’s National Health Commission reported to the World Health Organization that the outbreak is “associated with exposures in one seafood market in Wuhan City.” The WHO, in turn, wrongly reported it found “no evidence of human-to-human transmission.”
The market closed January 1. But the virus kept growing.
Were bats sold in the Wuhan market?
Merchants in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market sold vegetables, herbs, seafood, seaweed, ham bones and pork, and a wide array of domestic and exotic animals. But did they sell bats? Recent reports suggest no merchants sold bats of any kind.
So where did the bat-borne virus come from?
Some researchers speculate on the possibility of the virus jumping from a bat to another animal prior to making a jump to humans. They suggest the virus mutates as it jumps species. But that scenario seems doesn’t explain the how that would have happened in the case of COVID-19. It doesn’t account for a necessary immersion between bats and the intermediate animal.
Viruses from Bats
First, it’s significant to note that bats are known carriers of a vast array of viruses. And COVID-19 is not the first deadly virus originating from bats.
In fact, at least three major coronaviruses that started from bats:
- Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), 2003
- (camels, can be found in bat species) Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), 2012 and
- Swine Acute Diarrhea Syndrome (SADS), 2017.
Why China?
China’s biodiversity, including with bats, its large human population, its livestock, and its unique food culture make the country especially susceptible to bat-borne viruses.
A map of China shows various viruses originating from bats.
Given the history of bat-borne viruses in China, it is not a surprise to hear that scientists predictions about the next deadly virus.
“It is generally believed that bat-borne CoVs will re-emerge to cause the next disease outbreak. In this regard, China is a likely hotspot,” wrote Yi Fan, Kai Zhao, Zheng-Li Shi and Peng Zhous, researchers in China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.
In paper published March 2019, the researchers said it was “highly likely” a SARS- or MERS-like virus originating from bats would emerge in China. It was therefore urgent, they said, to detect the early warning signs of coronaviruses. “Above all, further extensive surveillance of SARSr-CoVs in China is warranted,” the WIV scientists wrote.
Why Bats?
The WIV outlined three main causes for concern about a potential outbreak of a virus from a bat:
- Bats “host a large number of highly diverse CoVs,” which may “regularly undergo recombination during infection.”
- Bat species are “widely distributed and live close to humans.”
- The viruses are pathogenic and transmissible.
“By this model, there are other CoVs that have not yet caused virus outbreaks but should be monitored,” the WIV team wrote.
Chinese Lab
The Wuhan Institute of Virology started studying bat-borne viruses at least as early as 2004. It is part of an international consortium of research institutes studying pathogens. Soon the institute added a feature that would allow researchers study dangerous pathogens.
Collecting Virus Samples in Bat-filled Caves
According to a May 24, 2018 article in the Sixth Tone, a website about China, researchers from the WIV went on cave expeditions from the Tibetan highlands to the southern coast to collect samples of viruses found in bats.
“Samples like these are of great value,” Luo Dongsheng, a WIV researcher, told the publication. “When there is a new outbreak [of disease], we can search the database, trace where the virus originated, and find out why it occurred in that location.”
The team intended to study how bats fight viruses in an effort to replicate those resiliency methods on human beings.
What is the likelihood that in an effort to study deadly viruses, researchers actually released them into society?
Lab Cleared to Work on the Most Dangerous Pathogens
By January 2018, the WIV opened a National Bio-safety Laboratory after receiving credentials to work on the most dangerous pathogens. It became one of the world’s Biosafety Level 4, BSL-4, labs. And it was the first one to open on the Chinese mainland.
“The lab provides a complete, world-leading biosafety system. This means Chinese scientists can study the most dangerous pathogenic microorganisms in their own lab,” China Daily quoted a WIV representative as saying.
According to a 2017 report in Nature magazine, the Wuhan lab planned to “focus on the control of emerging diseases, store purified viruses and act as a World Health Organization ‘reference laboratory’ linked to similar labs around the world.
George Gao, a director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the magazine the lab’s work on pathogens would “benefit the world.”
At the time, some scientists outside China worried about pathogens escaping. And later, in 2018, U.S. embassy officials sent diplomatic cables back to Washington that they had concerns the lab lacked appropriate measures to “safely operate this high-containment laboratory.”
Researchers around the world say they have no conclusive evidence to estimate how the virus started infecting humans.
It appears that the theory it leaked from the lab is just as strong as any other.
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