The thesis of the COVID-19 virus escaping from a lab in China deserves “further research,” WHO-appointed experts say Thursday, insisting on the lack of definitive evidence of the pandemic’s origin, whatever scenario considered.
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These 27 experts from a wide range of disciplines have also compiled a list of additional studies to be carried out on the theory of animal transmission of the COVID-19 virus from bats to humans.
“This preliminary report is not intended – and it does not – provide definitive conclusions on the origins of Sars-Cov2 because more information is needed from the studies recommended by the report,” warn experts from the Scientific Advisory Group on the Origins of New pathogens (SAGO).
SAGO’s mission goes well beyond the scope of just researching the origins of COVID-19 and, above all, must produce a catalog of best practices to enable better and faster detection of the vector of the next pandemic.
But attention is naturally drawn to the origin of Sars-Cov2, a virus that has killed fifteen million people since the first identified cases in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019, according to the WHO.
The origin debate is virulent in science, but above all it has taken on a political dimension that makes clarification more difficult.
A first mixed group of international and Chinese scientists, who had researched in early 2021 after long negotiations with the authorities in China, had supported the thesis of the intermediate animal and the farewell to a market in Wuhan.
He had caused an uproar by dismissing the theory of a leak from a lab in that city – despite the lack of data – almost to the point of forcing WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to put it back on the table.
Three SAGO experts from China, Brazil and Russia did not consider it necessary to pursue this path any further.
“Just because we’re talking about it doesn’t mean we think it’s the explanation,” said SAGO President Marietjie Venter, who believes for now “the strongest evidence points to zoonosis.”
But “we have to be open-minded and cover all the hypotheses,” including that of a lab leak, added co-president Jean-Claude Manuguerra during a press conference.
And more than two and a half years into the crisis, SAGO acknowledges “that key data to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic began” is still missing, even as progress has been made, for example, in identifying animals likely to play the role of the agent.
Reviews of possible cases outside of China ahead of those in Wuhan, particularly in Italy but also in France and the United States, are also underway.
The group stressed that they “only had access to information provided to them in published documents or presentations” by visiting scholars, particularly Chinese, and not to raw data.
He therefore creates a lengthy, multi-page wish list of the additional studies he believes are needed to advance the investigation.
A large number of these requests will require the active cooperation of the Chinese authorities, including the laboratory component, an extremely sensitive issue.
“We don’t have a mandate to enter any country anywhere in the world and we need the cooperation and cooperation of countries” to carry out these investigations, recalled Maria van Kerkhove, who oversees the fight against COVID-19 at the WHO.
“We will continue to work with our colleagues in China to see how we can progress on each of the recommended studies,” she said.
dr For his part, Tedros insisted it was crucial that the work of scientists to determine the origins of COVID be “completely divorced from politics”.