NEW THEORY LAB WORKER INFECTED BY BAT
Ross McGuinness
Fri, August 13, 2021
Dr Peter Embarek led a team of investigators from the World Health Organization (WHO) to Wuhan, China, earlier this year. (Reuters)
The World Health Organization (WHO) has played down media reports of comments by its own chief investigator that a lab worker in Wuhan could be COVID-19’s patient zero.
Dr Peter Embarek, the epidemiologist who led the WHO’s four-week fact-finding mission in China earlier this year, said it was "one of the likely hypotheses” that the first person to be infected with coronavirus was a lab employee.
He said one theory is that the lab worker was infected while taking samples from bats.
In an interview from a documentary shared by Danish television station TV2 on Thursday, he said: “An employee that could have been infected in the field while taking samples belongs to one of the likely hypotheses.
“This is where the virus jumps directly from a bat to a human. In that case, it would then be a laboratory worker instead of a random villager or other person who has regular contact with bats.”
The comments appear to portray a significant U-turn by the WHO’s investigation team, who said back in February the lab leak theory was “extremely unlikely”.
But the WHO played down Dr Embarek’s quotes to Danish television.
WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told Yahoo News UK reports of the conversation had been an “incorrect translation of an old interview”, saying it was recorded in March or April.
He told Yahoo News UK: “There are no new elements nor change of the position - all hypotheses are on the table.”
The documentary, The Virus Mystery, aired on TV2 on Thursday.
Dr Embarek told the programme the WHO found no direct evidence the COVID-19 outbreak in China was linked to bat research in Wuhan’s labs or at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
People in Wuhan, China, wearing face masks on Wednesday. (Getty)
Read more: Living with long COVID: 'It's really scary having an illness no one can cure'
China has continued to dismiss the lab leak theory, while most scientists agree it was not the likely cause of the coronavirus pandemic but it cannot be ruled out.
WHO director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last month it was “premature” to rule out a possible lab leak as the source of COVID-19.
He said: “I was a lab technician myself. I’m an immunologist and I have worked in the lab and lab accidents happen. It’s common.”
In the Danish TV2 documentary, Dr Embarek is pictured inspecting the stalls at the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan and examining what he said might have been living quarters for people who handled live animals there.
“It would mean that the contact between the human beings and whatever may have been in the market - i.e. virus and maybe live animals would have been more intense,” he said, in quotes reported by the Associated Press.
The World Health Organization's Dr Peter Embarek during his team's fact-finding mission to Wuhan, China, in February. (Reuters)
“It goes without saying that the close contact would be doubled many times between humans and animals if you are among them around the clock.”
In the Danish documentary, Dr Embarek also expressed concerns about another lab, close to the market, run by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
“What is more concerning to me is the other lab,” Dr Embarek said. “The one that is next to the market.”
US president Joe Biden has commissioned a report into the possibility of the lab leak origin theory, which is expected to be published at the end of this month.
Former Conservative Party leader, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, co-chairman of the inter-parliamentary alliance on China, told the Daily Telegraph that the Chinese authorities and the WHO “need to come clean”.
ANOTHER BATTY THEORY
Covid may have begun with Chinese scientist collecting bat samples, says WHO investigator
Sarah Knapton
Thu, August 12, 2021,
Field workers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology hunt for bats - Chinese Academy of Sciences
A Chinese scientist may have started the pandemic after being infected with coronavirus while collecting bat samples, the head of the World Health Organisation’s investigation has said.
In a documentary released this week by the Danish television channel TV2, Dr Peter Embarek said it was a “likely hypothesis” that a lab employee could have picked up the virus while working in the field.
Scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology were known to be working on bat coronavirus at labs in the city, but China has been uncooperative in providing details of their research.
Dr Embarek said WHO investigators were forced to conclude that a lab leak was “extremely unlikely” in their official report to avoid further arguments with the Chinese.
He said the team had come to an “impasse” with China, which would only allow a lab leak scenario to be included in the report if there were no recommendations to look further.
“My counterpart agreed we could mention (the lab leak scenario) in the report under the condition that we wouldn’t recommend specific studies of that hypothesis. We would just leave it there.”
Asked whether the Chinese would have agreed to the report without the scenario being labelled “extremely unlikely”, Dr Embarek said: “That would have probably demanded further discussion and arguments for and against I didn’t think it was worth it.”
However, Dr Embarek said it was possible that a lab employee may have been infected in the field.
“We consider that hypothesis a likely one,” he added.
Chinese pressure
Pressure is growing on China to release documentation of work at laboratories in Wuhan and allow a thorough investigation.
A report into the lab leak scenario, which was commissioned by Joe Biden, is expected to report at the end of August, and last month the WHO called for an in-depth audit, a request that the Chinese had rejected.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, co-chairman of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, said the international community urgently needed to identify how the virus outbreak erupted.
“There’s no question now that this process needs to be undertaken by the WHO. They need to come clean, as China needs to come clean, about the origins of the virus,” he said.
‘Arrogant refusal to accept the origins of the virus’
Sir Iain said millions of people had lost their lives on account of the “terrible and arrogant refusal to accept that the origins of the virus” may be linked to the Wuhan lab.
Dr Embarek, pictured below, also told the documentary team that he was concerned about a second lab, the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which had moved premises to just a third of a mile from the Wuhan wet market where the outbreak first emerged.
Peter Ben Embarek - Hector Retamal/AFP
“There are other labs in Wuhan that are interesting, such as CDC, which also worked with bats,” he said.
“What is more concerning to me is the other lab that is next to the market, because they were also handling coronaviruses, without potentially having the same level of expertise or safety ...
“When we were being shown around I thought it all looked new. I asked how old the lab was and they said, ‘We moved on 2 December’.
“That’s when it all started. We know that when you move a lab it disturbs all the procedures. You have to move the virus collection and the samples. That’s why that period of time and that lab are interesting.”
Lab leak theory persists
Experts in Britain said it was “plausible” that a lab employee could have brought the virus back to Wuhan, which would also fit with genetic studies showing it had jumped from an animal.
Dr Jonathan Stoye, group leader of the Retrovirus-Host Interactions Laboratory at The Francis Crick Institute, said: “It sounds entirely plausible to me
“My feeling when I read the original WHO report was there was no grounds for calling it extremely unlikely so it was always slightly strange.
“I have been saying for a while that this isn’t solved, the lab link is still there and we need to know more. The question is how we go about getting more.
“To my mind, there is no evidence of manipulation of the virus, but we know these investigators have been collecting bat samples, so they could have carried something back.”
Genetic studies support both a lab leak scenario and a wild infection
Ravi Gupta, professor of microbiology at the University of Cambridge, said that current genetic studies supported both a lab leak scenario and a wild infection
“The genetics are consistent with the lab leak/field work infection scenario described by the WHO mission lead, and also consistent with infection from the wild in general by a non-lab worker,” he said.
However, other researchers said the comments did little to move the investigation forward.
“There are many possible ways the virus was transmitted to humans,” said Prof David Robertson, head of viral genomics and bioinformatics at the University of Glasgow,
“Peter was just referring to something that was possible. As we’ve no evidence for this, or any link to a lab-leak, it remains just speculation.”
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