Geopolitical tensions are hampering efforts to get to the heart of COVID-19.
Why it matters: Insights into how COVID-19 started can help us prevent future pandemics – especially if it involves a leak or accident in a virology lab.
Send the news: The findings of a WTO-led mission in Wuhan, China, earlier this year to investigate the origins of COVID-19 are expected by mid-March, health agency officials said in a news conference on Friday after plans for an interim report was apparently deleted.
Context: The WTO team received international criticism when its members concluded at a press conference at the end of their trip that a laboratory accident was ‘extremely unlikely’, while remaining open to the possibility – promoted by Beijing – that the virus originated elsewhere and was introduced to China via contaminated frozen food.
Be smart: The most likely explanation remains the simplest: the coronavirus has jumped from an animal host in China to humans, the kind of zoonotic spread seen in numerous other emerging outbreaks.
- But a pandemic threat due to laboratory leaks is real, and as our ability to manipulate viruses increases, so will the danger.
- Although we are limited to the ability to prevent zoonotic floods, we can and must do much more to monitor and regulate the kind of research that can lead to the accidental introduction of a new virus.
The conclusion: Without much better transparency, we will probably never know for sure how COVID-19 started – and what steps we need to take to prevent it from happening again.