Opinion | Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points – The New York Times

By Alina Chan

Dr. Chan is a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard, and a co-author of Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19.

This article has been updated to reflect news developments.

On Monday, Dr. Anthony Fauci returned to the halls of Congress and testified before the House subcommittee investigating the Covid-19 pandemic. He was questioned about several topics related to the governments handling of Covid-19, including how the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which he directed until retiring in 2022, supported risky virus work at a Chinese institute whose research may have caused the pandemic.

For more than four years, reflexive partisan politics have derailed the search for the truth about a catastrophe that has touched us all. It has been estimated that at least 25 million people around the world have died because of Covid-19, with over a million of those deaths in the United States.

Although how the pandemic started has been hotly debated, a growing volume of evidence gleaned from public records released under the Freedom of Information Act, digital sleuthing through online databases, scientific papers analyzing the virus and its spread, and leaks from within the U.S. government suggests that the pandemic most likely occurred because a virus escaped from a research lab in Wuhan, China. If so, it would be the most costly accident in the history of science.

Heres what we now know:

At the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a team of scientists had been hunting for SARS-like viruses for over a decade, led by Shi Zhengli.

A map showing the closest known relatives of SARS-CoV-2 in a mine in the Yunnan province of China and in a cave in northern Laos.

A map showing the hundreds of large cities in China and the surrounding region.

A map showing the 950 miles between Yunnan and Wuhan, and the 1,190 miles between Laos and Wuhan. There are many cities in between.

The Wuhan lab ran risky experiments to learn how SARS-like viruses might infect humans. Their research started by collecting SARS-like viruses from bats and other wild animals, as well as from people exposed to them.

Next, they would identify high-risk viruses by screening for spike proteins that facilitate infection of human cells.

Then they would create new coronaviruses by inserting spike proteins or other features that could make the viruses more infectious in humans.

Finally, they would infect human cells, civets and humanized mice with the new coronaviruses, to determine how dangerous they might be.

Ultimately, a never-before-seen SARS-like virus with a newly introduced furin cleavage site, matching the description in the Wuhan institutes Defuse proposal, caused an outbreak in Wuhan less than two years after the proposal was drafted.

In the U.S., virologists generally use stricter Biosafety Level 3 protocols, which involves using personal respirators and biosafety cabinets in combination to avoid inhaling an airborne virus, as well as wearing gloves and wraparound gowns to prevent direct contact.

The Wuhan lab was regularly working with SARS-like viruses at Biosafety Level 2, which involves work done in the open air and doesnt require masks, allowing for inhalation of viral particles, and much less protective equipment worn on the body that allows for direct skin contact.

SARSCoV2 is a stealthy virus that transmits effectively through the air, causes a range of symptoms similar to those of other common respiratory diseases and can be spread by infected people before symptoms even appear. If the virus had escaped from a BSL-2 laboratory in 2019, the leak most likely would have gone undetected until too late.

An analysis of SARS-CoV-2s evolutionary tree shows how the virus evolved as it started to spread through humans.

The viruses that infected people linked to the market fall partway down this tree, suggesting that they were most likely not the earliest form of the virus that seeded the pandemic.

Not a single infected animal has ever been confirmed at the market or in its supply chain. Without good evidence that the pandemic started at the Huanan Seafood Market, the fact that the virus emerged in Wuhan points squarely at its unique SARS-like virus laboratory.

In the SARS and MERS epidemics, scientists were able to find key pieces of evidence that demonstrated a natural origin of the virus. They found infected animals, the earliest human cases were exposed to animals, there was antibody evidence in animal traders, ancestral variants were found in animals, and there was documented trade of host animals.

For SARS-CoV-2, all of these pieces of evidence are missing.

The pandemic could have been caused by any of hundreds of virus species, at any of tens of thousands of wildlife markets, in any of thousands of cities, and in any year. But it was a SARS-like coronavirus with a unique furin cleavage site that emerged in Wuhan, less than two years after scientists, sometimes working under inadequate biosafety conditions, proposed collecting and creating viruses of that same design.

While several natural spillover scenarios remain plausible, and we still dont know enough about the full extent of virus research conducted at the Wuhan institute by Dr. Shis team and other researchers, a laboratory accident is the most parsimonious explanation of how the pandemic began.

Given what we now know, investigators should follow their strongest leads and subpoena all exchanges between the Wuhan scientists and their international partners, including unpublished research proposals, manuscripts, data and commercial orders. In particular, exchanges from 2018 and 2019 the critical two years before the emergence of Covid-19 are very likely to be illuminating (and require no cooperation from the Chinese government to acquire), yet they remain beyond the publics view more than four years after the pandemic began.

Whether the pandemic started on a lab bench or in a market stall, it is undeniable that U.S. federal funding helped to build an unprecedented collection of SARS-like viruses at the Wuhan institute, as well as contributing to research that enhanced them. Advocates and funders of the institutes research, including Dr. Fauci, should cooperate with the investigation to help identify and close the loopholes that allowed such dangerous work to occur. The world must not continue to bear the intolerable risks of research with the potential to cause pandemics.

A successful investigation of the pandemics root cause would have the power to break a decades-long scientific impasse on pathogen research safety, determining how governments will spend billions of dollars to prevent future pandemics. A credible investigation would also deter future acts of negligence and deceit by demonstrating that it is indeed possible to be held accountable for causing a viral pandemic. Last but not least, people of all nations need to see their leaders and especially, their scientists heading the charge to find out what caused this world-shaking event. Restoring public trust in science and government leadership requires it.

A thorough investigation by the U.S. government could unearth more evidence while spurring whistleblowers to find their courage and seek their moment of opportunity. It would also show the world that U.S. leaders and scientists are not afraid of what the truth behind the pandemic may be.

Alina Chan (@ayjchan) is a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard, and a co-author of Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19. She was a member of the Pathogens Project, which the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists organized to generate new thinking on responsible, high-risk pathogen research.

More:

Opinion | Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points - The New York Times