He has 1500 viral strains ... 6 questions about the Wuhan laboratory that Corona is alleged to have leaked from

Since the outbreak of the emerging corona virus "Covid-19", speculation has increased that the virus causing the pandemic likely first appeared in the virus laboratory in Wuhan, China.

WHO inspectors visited the laboratory on Wednesday.

Before that, WHO experts visited a number of important sites in Wuhan, the city where the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in December 2019.

But the visit to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan is the most prominent on the team's agenda, due to a controversial hypothesis that the institute is the origin of the epidemic.

Former President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo floated that hypothesis last year.

Here are 6 questions about the institute visiting today:

1- What are the tasks of the institute?

The institute's scientists are conducting research on the most dangerous diseases in the world, and helped shed light on the aetiology of Covid-19 in the early days of the epidemic outbreak in Wuhan.

Last February, they published research that found that the genetic map of the new virus is 80% similar to the SARS coronavirus, and is 96% identical to the whole genome level of a coronavirus found in bats.

The lab researchers had previously conducted extensive investigations into the relationship of bats to an outbreak of disease in China.

Many scientists believe that the virus that causes Covid-19 originated in bats and may have been transmitted to humans by another mammal, but there is no proof of this yet.

2- Does the institute deal with deadly viruses?

Yeah.

The institute houses the largest virus bank in Asia and maintains more than 1,500 strains.

The complex is the most stringent security laboratory in Asia and is equipped to deal with Category IV pathogens (B4) such as Ebola.

The B4 laboratory, which costs 300 million yuan ($ 42 million), opened in 2018. The P3 laboratory, which includes safety levels for corona viruses, has been in operation since 2012.

3- What do we know about the origin of the virus?

Many prominent scientists announced at the beginning of the epidemic that the pathogens appeared to be of natural origin, and there is no major controversy regarding its first large-scale outbreak in late 2019 at a market for live wild animals sold for consumption in Wuhan.

But the tracing of the origin stops there, and some unconfirmed clues have indicated that the origin of the virus may have been at a time before its outbreak in Wuhan.

A study conducted by a group of Chinese experts and published in The Lancet Medical Journal in the first period of the epidemic showed that the first patient with Covid-19 had no relationship at all to the animal market, and the same was true for 13 cases of the first of the 41 confirmed cases.

4- Why talk about the hypothesis of a lab dropout?

US diplomatic cables reported by the Washington Post have revealed concerns in Washington about safety standards at the Wuhan facility.

Shi Jingli, one of the leading Chinese experts on coronaviruses in bats and deputy director of the P4 laboratory, raised further questions in an interview in June 2020 with Scientific American, in which she stated that she was initially concerned about whether the virus had leaked from her laboratory. .

Later tests showed that the genetic sequence of the virus was different from the viruses kept in the laboratory, according to Shi, who added, "I did not close my eyes for several days."

She said later that she "swears by her life" that there has been no leakage, according to Chinese media.

Trump and Pompeo promoted the hypothesis until it became on everyone's tongue.

And while Pompeo said last year there was "significant evidence" that the virus came from the laboratory, he had not provided any evidence and acknowledged that there was no certainty.

5- Why does the hypothesis of origin persist in a laboratory?

With no progress in determining the origin of the virus more than a year after the epidemic, the in vitro origin hypothesis has resurfaced.

In early January, a long New York magazine article that examined this possibility in detail revisited it.

Other prominent publications, including Le Monde and the Wall Street Journal, as well as experts at Harvard and Stanford universities, have published articles or reports that consider the laboratory hypothesis a possibility.

6- What happened on today's visit?

The WHO team spent three and a half hours at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and Peter Daszak, a team member, said on Twitter, “We had a very important meeting today with the staff of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, including Dr. Shi Ching Li. on her".

Shi, a well-known virus expert, has long focused her work on corona viruses that are transmitted from bats, which earned her the nickname (Batwoman), and she was among the first to be able to isolate the emerging corona virus that causes Covid-19 disease last year.

Most scientists, including Shi, reject the hypothesis that the virus leaked from a laboratory.

But some experts speculate that the virus that was discovered in wildlife and entered into laboratory experiments to find out the risk of transmission to humans may have been discharged from the laboratory by an infected employee.

The team will spend two weeks on field work after completing two weeks in quarantine in a hotel after arriving in Wuhan.