China takes WTO team to Wuhan bat laboratory amid coronavirus conspiracies

Wuhan lab led by China’s ‘bat woman’

In particular, the Wuhan laboratory team led by virologist Shi Zhengli, known as China’s “bat woman” for years of virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves, focused on coronaviruses carried by bats, exactly what the current pandemic is thought to have been caused by .

This makes the work of laboratories like the one in Wuhan all the more important, because understanding how viruses develop and spread from bats to humans can better enable scientists to fight future infections. However, it also means that such laboratories can house a number of potentially deadly pathogens, and that they need to be extra careful to ensure that they do not escape.

Although the strict anti-China Trump administration has suggested that it could take place in Wuhan, most experts disagree.

In an article published in the journal Nature Medicine last March, leading infectious disease specialists in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia said that it was ‘unlikely’ that the new coronavirus originated from a laboratory , with reference to comparative analysis of genomic data.

“Our analyzes clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a targeted engineered virus,” the newspaper said.

Peter Daszak, a member of the WHO team currently in Wuhan and president of EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit environmental health organization, said he was confident in the laboratory’s safety protocols.

“I know the lab very well,” said Daszak, who has worked closely with virologist Shi in the past.

“It’s a good virology lab that did a good job that was close to finding what the next SARS-related coronavirus would be. But it did not find me as far as I know. But you know, unfortunately it may have become so close. that people are now ironically blaming it. ‘

“We have already talked to (Shi) Zhengli, and she is open about these things. I hope we will have the same level of openness and transparency,” he said.

However, Daszak did express concern that the broader investigation might be too late to find important information in Wuhan, where the initial outbreak of the virus took place and presumably originated there.

“We could have worked here a year ago,” Daszak said, though he added. ‘We get good access … we are constantly looking for more and more information about every possible path. “

Wuhan Seafood Market Visit

Peter Ben Embarek, the leader of the WHO team and a food safety specialist, told CNN that “even though the place has been disinfected to some extent, all the shops are there – and the equipment is there. It gives you ‘ a good idea of ​​the state of the market in terms of maintenance, infrastructure, hygiene and flow of goods and people. ‘

The team was able to talk to locals and workers, Ben Embarek said, adding that it was too early in their investigations to draw conclusions.

“It’s clear that something has happened in the market,” said Ben Embarek. “But it could also be that other places had the same role, and that one was chosen only because some doctors were smart enough to link some sporadic cases together.”

Another WHO team member, Professor Thea Fisher, told CNN she was surprised by the “utility” of seeing a market abandoned over the past year. “We had very good public health people with us who undertook the environmental samples on the market. They explained to us exactly where they took the samples from the ventilation system.”

Daszak, who specializes in zoonoses – diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans – said the market visit is a critical point for me in the journey.

“We had to see the place where every infected person confirmed from that market had a stall. You felt how new it was, what the infrastructure was like,” he said. “Would it have been a confusing place, a busy place of pressure? So it was extremely useful.”