courtesy: hindustantimes.com
The investigation into the coronavirus disease’s origin, by World Health Organization (WHO), concluded that it was “extremely unlikely” that the highly transmissible virus had “escaped” from a laboratory in China’s Wuhan.
Some new developments put forward by the media outlets in the US have brought the idea back into consideration.
The debate over the pandemic’s origin primarily consists of two theories- one being a “natural spillover” and second being a “lab leak.”
The first hypothesis that was favoured by the team of Chinese and international experts (WHO) with the idea that the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes the COVID-19 is most likely “spilled over” from animals to humans through an emissary animal (bat). The team in the report said the virus had probably originated in a bat or a pangolin before making the leap to humans due to close contact.
Whereas the second hypothesis which is far for controversial suggests that the virus leaked accidentally from a maximum security biological laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and started to circulate soon after the onset of the pandemic.
In an open-letter published in the journal Science, the previous month, more than a dozen of scientists from epidemiologists to biologists called for further investigation into both the hypothesis on the table and urged it to be “taken seriously” until there is sufficient data.
The scientists questioned the WHO report and China’s transparency during the visit.
The US infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci is also in the race of skepticism. On 11th May, Dr. Fauci acknowledged to being “not convinced” that the virus developed naturally and had called for a thorough investigation onto the origin of the virus. Two weeks later, US President Biden, on the green signal from his adviser, instructed his intelligence agencies to double-down on their investigations into the controversy of a possible lab leak of the virus that cause the pandemic.
Revelations made by the Wall Street Journal have also pointed out that several WIV researchers became sick in the fall of 2019 with the symptoms similar to both “COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses,” out of which at-least three were hospitalised which added fuel to the idea that the virus had escaped from the Wuhan lab itself.
The lack of China’s transparency in this matter had only fueled further speculation and distrust amongst the global scientific community.