A woman and a baby in Wuhan, China, where the first COVID-19 cases were reported.Credit: Nicolas Asfouri/AFP/Getty

"Long story short, COVID-19 leads to lasting and possibly permanent changes in immune cells in some, but not all people."

"Their white blood cells were unrecognizable compared to healthy donors."

"We've learned that this virus, and we can't tell you how, leads to the death of a whole bunch of T cells, and then seems to, at least in some people, lead to damage to the white blood cells they make after that infection."

"Once a T cell commits to responding to one thing, it can't respond to anything else. As we age, more and more of them become committed to responding to infections, or all the other things we might be exposed to, and fewer and fewer are available to respond to new threats."

"Many, hopefully most people, will be fine. Once you've got T cells committed to the vaccine or the virus, in theory these should be expanded and activated once you are boosted."

Dawn Bowdish, Canada research chair in aging and immunity, McMaster University

It could be that SARS-CoV-2 is remaining in the body and causing immune alterations."

"[Some groups reported people with even mild infections had symptoms of T cell] exhaustion [and people with multiple infections of COVID had] poorer performing immune memory to SARS-CoV-2."

"It was almost as if their T cells were giving up the ghost."

Anthony Leonardi, T cell researcher, Boston

"Much remains to be learned."

"However, I agree with the school of thought that it is preferable to avoid this infection, because of the risks of long COVID and evidence of long-lasting effects."

Immunologist Tania Watts, University of Toronto

A health-care worker tends to a person with COVID-19 in London, where the viral variant B.1.1.7 caused cases to surge.Credit: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AFP/Getty

A new alert has been raised among the community of scientists absorbed in the study of SARS-CoV-2 causing COVID and its short- and long-term effects on the human body and mind. Researchers are facing evidence that repeated infections with the COVID-19 virus may be responsible for premature aging of the human immune system. Ontario public health officials noted recently in an update that evidence is emerging of SARS-CoV-2 causing "immune dysregulation".

This is characterized by an immune system that fails to behave normally. Where it has been observed that white blood cell counts may be degraded, in that immune cells fail to respond in the manner they normally would, and inflammation becomes more troublesome than it should be. New research suggests that T cells that normally aid in the production of antibodies to kill infected cells, have been modified by COVID.

"A potential increase in acquired impaired immunity in the Ontario population could have significant impact on the incidence and associated burden of infectious diseases -- and other conditions in the longer term."

Public Health Ontario brief

A cell infected with SARS-CoV-2 particles (pink; artificiallly coloured).Credit: Science Photo Library

Of concern is that people may be found to be less capable of fending off pathogens and infections like influenza as a result of COVID infections, or that an immune system that has become degraded could lead to an increase in autoimmune diseases such as diabetes. Immune imbalance, which has been recognized as a key feature of long COVID, an issue that intrigued Dr. Bowdish, leading her to examine a blood sample from a hospitalized patient with SARS-CoV-2.

As a result of research by her team, results of a small study has been published indicating abnormal white blood cell counts and high inflammation present even in asymptomatic and mild 'recoverees'. A problem that is seen to be more pronounced in people with severe COVID cases. In some instances it was found that blood cells never fully recover "and seem to generate autoimmune reactions" causing the body's immune system to attack its own tissues.

 

A person with COVID-19 lies in an intensive-care unit in Santiago.Credit: Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty

Lower numbers of "naive" T and B cells (cells producing antibodies) were found in people who had COVID, in a recent study. Naive cells represent those not yet responding to an infection and therefore not yet dedicated to a single-purpose function. Fewer naive T cells is recognized as a sign of "immune aging", where a level of resilience remains to produce more naive cells "but not an indefinite capacity", points out Dr. Bowdish.

According to one theory, SARS-CoV-2 hyperactivates T cells leading in severe cases to overzealous cells causing chronic elevated inflammation responsible for harm done to the body, according to Anthony Leonardi. A Boston group reported that people with long COVID had persistent bits of spike protein in their blood remaining up to a year post diagnosis, seen as a potential reservoir of infection.

It becomes easier to be reinfected when people with multiple infections of COVID ended up with "poorer performing immune memory to SARS-CoV-2", explained Dr. Leonardi.Vaccines and boosters are seen still to be effective against the risk of severe infections. Most people were found in a review to eradicate the virus, and current vaccines "elicit robust T cell responses that likely contribute to remarkable protection against hospitalization or death", said Dr. Bowdish.

Still, with some people losing naive cells, this may leave them less likely to respond to other viruses or infection "so that's the major concern", elaborated Dr.Bowdish. Persistent inflammation is a troubling sign, one that leads people to be more likely to develop cardiovascular problems or strokes. 

Children play in Israel, where roughly 60% of people have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine.Credit: Guy Prives/Getty

Science Pulling Together to Avoid Exposing China's Wuhan Responsibility

"These emails show a lamentable lack of openness and transparency among Western scientists who appear to have been more interested in shutting down a hypothesis they thought was very plausible, for political reasons." 

Viscount Ridley, co-author, Viral: the search for the origin of COVID

"He [Prof.Mike Farzan, Scripps Research] is bothered by the furin site and has a hard time [to] explain that as an event outside the lab, though there are possible ways in nature but highly unlikely."

"I think this becomes a question of how do  you put all this together, whether you believe in this series of coincidences, what you know of the laboratory in Wuhan, how much could be in nature -- accidental release or natural event?"

"I am 70:30 or 60:40."

Jeremy Farrar, director, Wellcome Trust

"[The furin cleavage site] strikes me as unusual."

"I think the only people with sufficient information or access to samples to address it would be the teams working in Wuhan."

Professor Andrew Rambaut, University of Edinburgh

"Further debate about such accusations would unnecessarily distract top researchers from their active duties and do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular."

Dr.Ron Fouchier, U.S. biosecurity expert

"I share  your view that a swift convening of experts in a confidence-inspiring framework is needed or the voices of conspiracy will quickly dominate, doing great potential harm to science and international harmony."

Dr.Francis Collins, U.S. National Institutes of Health

 

Wuhan Institute of Virology: Associated Press

Harmony, now that's a word describing a social condition that Beijing is particularly fond of. Harmony means that suspicions are set aside, along with accusations. And that includes an entire range of human social constructs along with state interventions and initiatives, including the co-opting of sovereign nations into a giant grip as China expands its own sovereignty in control and command. It includes penalties and punishment for doubting Beijing's right to exercise its authority within its sovereign ambit so mass re-education and slave labour is China's internal business and no other countries'.

And harmony is best achieved by Beijing's word being taken for what it is not; trustworthy. The pathogen that has proven so deadly to so many millions around the globe is a naturally evolving phenomenon, according to Beijing, a zoonotic pathogen that has roiled the world body like no other such has before it, on a scale to alter human social interaction, take down the world economic order, and re-order the global community on a scale previously unimagined.

Whether or not it is even proven that the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19 and ultimately all its mutated nuances plaguing the world was a laboratory escapee from a highly secure lab that was not sufficiently secure is one thing; China's response to the original virus in containment within China with little concern for its escape out of China in maintaining open national borders and accusing other countries of racism for closing theirs, stands as a special example of abandonment of responsibility.

And the world's leading scientists in the field of deadly pathogens in the interests of an open scientific community of trust and cooperation where scientists from all over the world can freely exchange between themselves in communicating their latest discoveries is quite wonderful in theory, but in practise may leave something to be desired; allowing the world's leading human-rights suppressor and oppressor to go on denying any role in the mass destruction the world faces.

Elite British and American scientists appear to have more or less agreed that COVID-19 likely was an accidental release from a secure laboratory's explorations in virus attributes and combinations; science is nothing if not curious and unleashing potentially destructive organisms in the conceited belief they are more than capable of restraining the results to a closed laboratory setting does on occasion result in breakaway accidents; unfortunate occurrences at the mild end, catastrophic in this particular instance.

Information has now come to light of the discussions that took place between scientists of great renown and their opinion of the Wuhan virus that speedily took over the world. "A likely explanation", said an email from Jeremy Farrar of the Wellcome Trust focused on health research based in London being that COVID had evolved rapidly from a SARS-type virus within human tissue in a low-security laboratory. This was a communication received by Dr.Anthony Fauci and Dr.Francis Collins of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, that such evolution may have "accidentally created a virus primed for rapid transmission between humans".

A teleconference between a dozen scientists on February 1, 2020 led to a series of emails, Dr.Farrar's one of them, some refuting the theory of an escaped virus, urging caution, and others more convinced of the likelihood of a virus escape. Members of the U.S. House Oversight committee granted access to the documents led to their becoming publicly available. The emails are indication that scientists were actively attempting to close the debate into a laboratory leak theory.

Of particular concern was a part of COVID-19 called the furin cleavage site, representing a section of the spike protein aiding the virus entry into human cells, creating its huge infectiousness capacity. Scientific institutions in possession of these emails repeatedly spurned outside efforts to publish their content. The University of Edinburgh as an example refused a Freedom of Information request to scrutinize Dr.Rambaut's emails that claimed "disclosure would be likely to endanger the physical or mental health and safety of individuals".

Ilustracija/AFP

That Tangled Web : Hiding In Plain Sight

COVID-19’s Early Spread In Wuhan, China

"[The team planned to] take various sequences from similar coronaviruses, and create a new sequence that is essentially the average of them ..."

"They would then synthesize the viral genome from the computer sequence, thus creating a virus genome that did not exist in nature, but looks natural as it is the average of natural viruses."

"If SARS-CoV-2 comes from an artificial consensus sequence composed of genomes with 95 percent of similarity to each other ... I would predict that we will never find a really good match in nature and just a bunch of close matches across parts of the sequence, which so far is what we are seeing."

"The problem is that those opposed to a lab-leak scenario will always just say that we need to sample more ..."

"Scientists overall are afraid of discussing the issue of the origins due to the political situation. This leaves a small and vocal minority of biased scientists free to spread misinformation."

Unidentified WHO collaborator

An aerial view of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Wuhan scientists have consistently denied creating Sars-CoV-2 in a lab Credit: AFP via Getty Images/Hector Retamal

 

"...In a letter in the journal Science, 18 prominent biologists—including the world’s foremost coronavirus researcher—are lending their weight to calls for a new investigation of all possible origins of the virus, and calling on China’s laboratories and agencies to 'open their records' to independent analysis."

"'We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data', the scientists write."

"The letter, which was organized by the Stanford University microbiologist David Relman and the University of Washington virologist Jesse Bloom, takes aim at a recent joint study of covid origins undertaken by the World Health Organization and China, which concluded that a bat virus likely reached humans via an intermediate animal and that a lab accident was 'extremely unlikely'."

"That conclusion was not scientifically justified, according to the authors of the new letter, since no trace of how the virus first jumped to humans has been found and the possibility of a laboratory accident received only a cursory look. Just a handful of the 313 pages of the WHO origins report and its annexes are devoted to the subject."

Rowan Jacobsen, MIT Technology Review

Newly-revealed information has now seen publication to the effect that Chinese scientists in Wuhan and American scientists working alongside them, had planned the creation of an entirely new coronavirus outside of nature. Their idea was to combine the genetic code of other viruses in the creation of one which, while unique, saw its creation as laboratory-made, not one spontaneously appearing through natural means unassisted by human intervention.

 

A grant application that had been submitted to the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) revealed through newly leaked documents that the team of international scientists planned to combine closely related strains' genetic data for the purpose of producing new viruses. The plan was uncovered by a genetics expert who worked with the World Health Organization who took the time to study the proposals in detail and concluded that had SARS-CoV2 been produced like this the mystery of a close match in nature never having been found would be solved.

 

Shi Zhengli in a high security laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Chinese virologist says calls by outsiders to inspect her lab's records are "not acceptable."  AP Images

A virus strain called Banal-52, discovered in Laos a month ago shares 96.8 percent of the genome, as the closest naturally occurring virus to SARS-CoV-2. The expectation by scientists is a direct ancestor to the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19 should be found to be 99.98 percent of a match, and to the present none has been found. The international scientific team had laid plans to take sequences from naturally occurring coronaviruses for use in the creation of a totally new sequence, according to the DARPA proposals, leaked to the pandemic origins analysis group Drastic.

 

It was revealed that British zoologist Peter Daszak submitted the proposal on behalf of a consortium which included Daszak EcoHealth Alliance, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the University of North Carolina and Duke NUS in Singapore. As a member of the WHO investigating team who travelled to China to look into the possibility that the SARS-CoV-2 virus had been leaked from the WIV laboratory as many have suggested and Beijing angrily denies, the team's search for the virus's origins, canted heavily toward Dr. Duszak's confident denials.

 

Dr.Duszak, in fact, had close professional ties to the Wuhan Institute and had spent some time there previously in his collaborative scientific capacity. Just incidentally, Dr. Duszak was seen to be the knowledgeable individual behind the investigation's conclusion, published in The Lancet, dismissing any suggestions that COVID's origins were not natural, dismissing the expressed doubts of its origin in nature as a conspiracy theory.

"A proper investigation should be transparent, objective, data-driven, inclusive of broad expertise, subject to independent oversight, and responsibly managed to minimize the impact of conflicts of interest,"

"Public health agencies and research laboratories alike need to open their records to the public."

"Investigators should document the veracity and provenance of data from which analyses are conducted and conclusions drawn."

Search-of-SARS-CoV-2-origins Letter

Peter Daszak and others visit a cave at Seven Star Park in Guilin, China, where visitors are likely to encounter bats.   Credit: EcoHealth Alliance

"Scientists have called for Peter Daszak, the president of U.S.-based research organization EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) to quit, accusing him of concealing conflicts of interest, witholding critical information, and misleading public opinion during the COVID pandemic."

"EHA has been thrust into the public eye during the pandemic because of its work studying bat coronaviruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which is located in the city Chinese city that was the first epicentre of the COVID outbreak."

"EHA recently came under heavy scrutiny after a group of online researchers and correspondents known as the Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19 (DRASTIC) published a 2018 proposal to the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for research that would have involved enhancing viruses to study them."

Newsweek

Offending Beijing -- Searching for COVID Answers

"[A Phase Two probe would require] audits of relevant laboratories and research institutions operating in the area of the initial human cases identified in December 2019."

"Finding the origins of this virus is a scientific exercise that must be kept free from politics. For that to happen, we expect China to support this next phase of the scientific process by sharing all relevant data in a spirit of transparency."

"We ask China to be transparent and open and to co-operate."

"We owe it to the millions who suffered and the millions who died, to know what happened."

"[It was] premature to discount the lab theory [As the first WHO probe concluded it to be unlikely.] As you know, I was a lab technician myself, an immunologist, and have worked in the lab. And lab accidents happen. It’s common."

"[A new WHO International Scientific Advisory Group for Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO)]will play a vital role in the next phase of studies into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, as well as the origins of future new pathogens."

"[There is a need for more] studies of animal markets in and around Wuhan, including continuing studies on animals sold at the Huanan wholesale market."

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wants China to allow a biosecurity audit of some of its virology labs. Jean-Christophe Bott/Keystone vía AP

"It’s a sign that the WHO might be able to do [a] more credible or balanced investigation."

"Right now, the lack of clarity is in China’s interest."

Alina Chan, a gene therapy researcher at the Broad Institute

 

"I’m worried about delays and of course it’s a bit strange. We’re losing valuable time."

"[While it's] logical [to push for lab audits the demand right now could backfire.] It’s not going to be popular with China, so I’m a little bit worried that that will shut the doors to the rest of the studies that we feel are needed."

Marion Koopmans, virologist, veterinarian, Erasmus University Medical Center

Customers select seafood at a wet market in Dandong, Liaoning province, China 

Philip Wen/Reuters

In the early stages of the pandemic WHO Director-General Adhonom Ghebreyesus faced scathing criticism over a number of judgemental lapses; the decision to take Beijing's word for its claim that it took awhile to recognize the appearance of a new virus and its harsh impact, the acceptance of Beijing's assurance it was not communicable, and the lapse of time before the 'Wuhan virus' was declared a pandemic, thus failing to alert the world community in a timely enough manner to a fast-moving viral juggernaut that was soon to upend normalcy everywhere.

Since then, the WHO head appears to have made a reversal. He is not viewed more latterly as being quite as comfortable with China and its assurances as he was back then. And he is under great pressure from some countries -- Australia certainly comes to mind, in its strenuous insistence from the beginning that an investigation into the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was badly needed, if for no other very good reason that would inform scientists of its origins, trajectory and how better the world might respond in future to new such viruses as they appear.

The real pressure, however, comes from the WHO's greatest financial supporter, the United States. Former President Donald Trump had little use for the institution and threatened to halt its funding, and his successor Joe Biden has continued to apply pressure on the World Health Organization for a far more in-depth investigation into the origins of COVID-19, which has taken such a dreadful world toll on the lives of millions of people who succumbed to its lethal complications, much less those living with a wide spectrum of COVID-induced symptoms.

It should have come as no surprise to anyone -- much less Beijing -- that another proposal for a second phase of studies into the origins of the coronavirus would be recommended by the World Health Organization. Suggesting audits of laboratories and markets in Wuhan, requiring greater cooperation and transparency in the process from China. The plan was presented to member states hard on the heels of a declaration that investigations were being held up by the lack of raw data reflecting the initial period of COVID-19's spread in China.

A commitment to Phase Two would encompass studies of humans, wildlife and animal markets in the city of Wuhan and certainly inclusive of the Huanan wholesale animal market where the virus was first thought to have emanated. China which has always been resistant to any deep scrutiny of the virus linked to Wuhan, has no obvious wish to be cooperative in a new study which promises to delve deeper than the previous one did, where researchers submitted to official Chinese scrutiny and oversight and the resulting paucity of requested data and documentation, much less exposure to critical sites for review.

In view of the fact that some scientists have raised their doubts over China's explanations, including its suggestion that the virus emanated from outside China; one theory that U.S. military brought it with them, another that it was imported into China with frozen food; and that the United States is adamantly pushing for a deeper investigation, the WHO has little option but to proceed. The U.S. along with many scientists demand a further investigation, and with particular attention into the Wuhan Institute of Virology which at the time of the virus emergence had been conducting research into virus vectors, bats.

Beijing maintains that the theory the virus could be connected to the Wuhan laboratory is beyond remote -- "absurd", repeatedly claiming that "politicizing" the issue would only serve to hamper any investigation. Any decision on continuing the probe "should be reached by all members through consultation", responded Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian. As in, perhaps, China, as a member of the UN Security Council having the capability of scuppering international investigations of any kind by veto. 

A Chinese produce market.

Felix Wong/South China Morning Post/Getty

"[I wish Tedros had owned up to past WHO] missteps. I don’t think he can simply just take the next step and not worry about what’s happened so far."

"I’m very suspicious about dismissing the initial task force and now allowing individuals and governments to nominate themselves, which will result in a partisan, selective process and not lead to the best composition." 

"They’re not a truly independent body [World Health Organization]. They are the product of a very political world, and what makes their problem 100 times worse is that they don’t have the resources to operate independently."

David Relman, microbiome researcher, Stanford University

 

"The Chinese side noted the draft plan made by Tedros and the secretariat and the Chinese side is looking into it."

"Origin-tracing is a scientific matter. All parties should respect the opinion of the scientists and should refrain from politicizing origin-tracing."

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian

The Wuhan Institute of Virology has carried out research on coronaviruses for years because these pathogens are endemic to the region where it's located.  Credit: Kyodo News via Getty

Peter Daszak (right), Thea Fischer (left), and other members of the WHO team investigating the origins of covid-19 arrive at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China's central Hubei province.

 

"We would ask that we separate the science from the politics, and let us get on with finding the answers that we need in a proper, positive atmosphere."

"This whole process is being poisoned by politics."

WHO emergencies chief Michael Ryan 

 

"The technical team will prepare a proposal for the next studies that will need to be carried out and will present that to the director-general."

"He will then work with member states about the next steps. There is no timeline."

WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib

 

"[The first phase of the WHO expert panel study was] insufficient and inconclusive. There is a need for a] timely, transparent, evidence-based and expert-led Phase 2 study, including in the People's Republic of China."

"[There is a need for access for independent experts to] complete, original data and samples [relevant to the source of the virus and early stages of the outbreak]."

"We appreciate the WHO's stated commitment to move forward with Phase 2 of the COVID-19 origins study, and look forward to an update from Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus."

U.S. Diplomatic Mission, Geneva 

Workers in protective gear carry a bag containing a giant salamander that was reported to have escaped from the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province, Monday, Jan. 27, 2020. (Chinatopix via AP)

When the mysterious appearance of a strange pneumonia was discovered in patients admitted to hospitals in Wuhan, China in December of 2019, and soon afterward the virus began spreading outside China's borders, Beijing took exception to the virus, identified as a new coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2 being familiarly referred to as the 'Wuhan virus', until the World Health Organization gave it the pandemic name it is now known by, COVID-19.

 

And now that world powers like the United States and Great Britain are leading a drive for a full and deep investigation to discover the origins of the virus causing COVID-19, Beijing continues to deny that suspicions harboured by many in the West that the closed high-security Wuhan Virology Institute laboratory might possibly have loosed the virus accidentally, giving the virus its villainous start on its global predation. Chinese authorities found it much more palatable to insist that the Huanan wet market was a likelier source of the zoonotic when the pathogen made its leap from animal to human.

A growing clamour of voices calling for an independent, unbiased and unchaperoned-by-Chinese-authorities investigation take place to settle the question once and for all; whether the virus origins was a lab-held virus that made its escape or the leap of transmission between species. The WHO assembly was informed by a Chinese representative the official Chinese position that the "China part" of the origin-tracing study "has been completed". In other words: you want to study further, go right ahead but don't expect any cooperation from China. 

 

An interpreter made it clear as well that China was interested in seeing "a global origin-tracing cooperation" -- the translation of which is that China feels the hunt would be best carried out elsewhere than in China. Literally washing its hands of any further investigation, much less the thought that China would further lend itself to another such survey as the original WHO 'independent' investigation when the investigation team was comprised of more Chinese investigators than WHO investigators. 

 

And where the official presence of Chinese authorities at all interviews and site visits constrained a deep and useful investigation, topped off by China's refusal to allow the WHO investigators access to critical records. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian suggested on Wednesday that U.S. sites should be explored -- reflecting Chinese specious 'speculation' the coronavirus could have emerged there. Surely derisively. 

 

Wuhan, a central Chinese city of 11 million people, is where China's first-ever BSL-4-certified laboratory is located. This is a rare classification identifying laboratories meant to work with the world's most lethal pathogens. When it was opened in 2018, the Wuhan Institute of Virology campus was recognized as specializing in coronavirus studies, particularly bat coronaviruses which just happen to represent the likely origin of COVID-19. 

 

The Wuhan Institute is noted for its  unusual housing of the "most comprehensive inventory of sampled bat viruses in the world", according to a January investigation by New York magazine, considered the most rigorous journalistic probe into the COVID-19 potential lab origins. In addition, the lab is understood to engage in gain-of-function experiments, where researchers attempt to supercharge coronaviruses to infect lab mice or human cell samples. Gain-of-function is meant to discover methods of combating the emergence of new viruses from nature, but it is also "exactly the kind of experiment from which a SARS-2-like virus could have emerged", explains a scientific breakdown of COVID-129 origins by The Wire, an Indian news site.

Given these incriminating circumstances, how likely is it that a novel coronavirus linked to bats might have simply by coincidence begun infecting humans who just happened to be located within easy walking distance of a laboratory that incidentally is the world centre for studying highly infectious bat coronaviruses? As a plot of fictitious origins it is hardly believable, as a scenario of real-time circumstances, there is no competition for the actual location of the Virology laboratory escape.

With respect to circumstantial identification of source, American diplomats back in 2018, long before the emergence of the coronavirus causing COVID, visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology and afterward drafted a cable to Washington complete with a heads-up warning of a mishap waiting to happen. Their distinct impression was that the facility's safety and security standards were lax enough to risk sparking a pandemic. According to the Washington Post, which headed the story, "The new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory", read the cable.

Three years later, the revelation that a US. intelligence report that three workers at the Wuhan Institute were hospitalized "with symptoms consistent with both COVID19 and common seasonal illness", came out this week. Another very peculiar coincidence, this time bringing Canada into the narrative, when researcher Xiangguo Qiu, working at the high-security BSL-4 lab at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg was escorted from the facility along with her scientist husband and a Chinese student, all later fired, with no public explanation.

The two-week investigation by the World Health Organization scientific team of ten, joined by a team of 17 Chinese scientists in Wuhan conducted interviews under constant supervision. The researchers spent a mere few hours at the Virology lab where select documents were presented for their examination but no forensic examination of lab protocols was undertaken, only a few supervised meetings with laboratory staff who assured them the institute had witnessed "no disruptions or incidents" at the time of the emergence of COVID-19.

"The lab leak hypothesis has picked up more adherents as time passes and scientists fail to detect a bat or other animal infected with a virus that has covid’s signature genetics. By contrast, within a few months of the start of the 2003 SARS pandemic, scientists found the culprit coronavirus in animals sold in Chinese markets. But samples from 80,000 animals to date have failed to turn up a virus pointing to the origins of SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes covid."

"The virus’s ancestors originated in bats in southern China, 600 miles from Wuhan. But covid contains unusual mutations or sequences that made it ideal for infecting people, an issue explored in depth by journalist Nicholas Wade."

"Scientists from the Wuhan Institute have collected thousands of coronavirus specimens from bats and registered them in databases closed to inspection. Could one of those viruses have escaped, perhaps after a “gain of function” experiment that rendered it more dangerous?"

Arthur Allen, KHN

The World Community Has a Right to Know

Lab-leak theories centre on the Wuhan Institute of Virology   Reuters

"[Of the lab-leak theory]: That possibility certainly exists, and I am totally in favour of a full investigation of whether that could have happened."

"[I am] not convinced [the virus originated naturally]."

Dr.Anthony Fauci, U.S. President Biden's chief medical adviser   

 

"From day one China has been engaged in a massive cover-up."

"As the evidence for the lab-leak hypothesis grows, we should be demanding the full investigation of all origin hypotheses that's required."

Jamie Metzl, a fellow at the Washington-based Atlantic Council 

 

"We do need to be a bit patient but we also need to be diplomatic."

"We can't do this without support from China. It needs to be a no-blame environment."

Prof Dale Fisher, Singapore's National University Hospital 

"I've read it, [report released by the Washington Post calling into question when and how the SARS-CoV-2 virus emerged] it's a complete lie."

"Those claims are groundless. The lab has not been aware of this situation, and I don't even know where such information came from."

Yuan Zhiming, director, Wuhan National Biosafety Lab, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Wuhan, China

The story in the Wall Street Journal claims that three laboratory workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill in November of 2019, and were admitted to hospital for treatment. A month later, China advised the World Health Organization of the sudden appearance of a zoonotic, a virus transmitted from animal to human, and that authorities in China felt confident the virus had erupted in a fresh food market where wild animals were sold and pangolins were the suspected source.

The U.S. intelligence report cited by the paper had originally been the product of an investigation authorized by then-President Donald Trump who stated  his determination to get to the bottom of the matter that he suspected was Beijing's lack of openness in alerting the world community of the presence of a galloping new virus with unknown properties but a surprising level of lethality, initially presenting as a new kind of pneumonia. 

It was the newspaper's contention and possible purpose of re-visiting the investigative report and coming away with greater details, that what it revealed could conceivably bring support to the evidence already in question, leading to a broader and deeper investigation into what many in the scientific community suspect -- and many others object to -- that the COVID-19 virus could have been a lab escapee.

What is undeniable unless new information arises, is that the first cases of a strange new pneumonia were being reported toward the end of December 2019 in the central Chinese city of Wuhan where coincidentally two high-security laboratories for the study of viruses were located. One laboratory had undertaken studies of viruses collected from bats in caves and theorized that the bats had infected pangolins and the pangolins carried the virus with them when they were trapped for sale at the live animal market in Wuhan.

 

Although rumours have circulated widely that the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19 was not a zoonotic that naturally occurred, infecting people who had come in contact with a vector at the Wuhan market, but rather a laboratory-produced virus and that inept, insecure methods led to its escape, China has steadfastly denied any such allegations. Claiming instead that the lab theory was unproven and nonsensical and simply represented U.S. paranoia.

 

Instead Chinese authorities point to the possibility that the virus may very well not have originated in China, or Wuhan, at all, and was imported with frozen food from some other geographic location. Wildlife trading too was cited as a source, as well as a circulating virus that had emerged elsewhere and found its way to China by some unsuspected means. China's foreign ministry rejected the claim that three lab workers had been hospitalized, characterizing it as a lie.

 

The World Health Organization, which had sent an independent team of researchers to Wuhan months ago to undertake a detailed investigation, now entertains thought of another investigation, this time perhaps without Chinese authorities' interference, although without Beijing's approval for yet another group of scientists arriving in Wuhan there can be no follow-up of the original which declared its joint opinion that no lab escape of a virus was a likely explanation for the pandemic.

 

That opinion was reached despite that there were no unescorted interviews permitted where the investigators could privately, without interference and the presence of Chinese authorities, closely question someone who might have information critical to the investigation, nor were the investigators permitted to see collected data directly relevant to the more immediate Chinese investigation of the market where purportedly the outbreak was traced to.

 

According to Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman for WHO, the organization's technical teams were currently making decisions on whether to proceed further and if so, how. Further study was obviously required into the role of animal markets, as well as the hypothesis of a lab leak. The issue, after all, is that of a lethal, minuscule, unseen pathogen seeking out new hosts, invading body cells and replicating wildly. A virus that has in the space of a year-and-a-half killed three and a half million people worldwide.  

Knowing its true origins could help medical science more fully understand the nature of the pathogen and how best to control it. It could also lead to techniques of detection and deterrence that could help avoid future such global pandemics. As well as teach both the global medical community and governments how best to anticipate new and perhaps even more deadly invasions of viruses from wild animal to humanity.

 

The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was linked to early Covid cases   Getty Images

 

  

Waiting to receive Covid-19 vaccinations in Mumbai, India, on Monday. Credit...Divyakant Solanki/EPA, via Shutterstock A Global Disaster

"The current wave is particularly dangerous."

 "It is supremely contagious and those who are contracting it are not able to recover as swiftly. In these conditions, intensive care wards are in great demand."

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal

 

"[The world is entering a critical phase of the pandemic and needs to have vaccinations available for all adults as soon as possible]."

"This is both an ethical and public health imperative."

"As variants keep spreading, this pandemic is far from over until the whole world is safe."

Udaya Regmi, South Asia head, International Federation of Red Cross, Red Crescent Societies

 

"As India did that, [halting vaccine exports to retain supplies to inoculate its population], the pipeline of vaccines dried up for COVAX."

"I don't know who did the maths, but someone did the maths wrong."

"And the decision to go exclusively with the Serum Institute of India and not provide the license to more manufacturers has proved deadly for the developing world [in a shortage of vaccines for re-distrition]."

Leena Menghaney, Médecins Sans Frontières, New Delhi

 

"The ferocity of the second wave did take everyone by surprise."

"While we were all aware of second waves in other countries, we had vaccines at hand, and no indications from modeling exercises suggested the scale of the surge."

K. Vijay Raghavan, principal scientific adviser to the Indian government

 

"The situation is horrible, absolutely terrible ... Everyone is afraid, every single person."

"People are afraid that if I am talking to a person, maybe I won't get to talk to them tomorrow or in the near future."

Manoj Garg, resident, New Delhi

AstraZeneca doses manufactured in India arriving in Kathmandu, Nepal, in January.  Credit...Niranjan Shrestha/Associated Press

In January, when the Indian government appeared satisfied that it would be able to control the initial outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, it enacted strict orders for its population to remain at home to venture so far and no further from their homes, and only for essential business. The infection rate in India's largest cities wasn't as disastrous as it might have been, given crowded living conditions and matters appeared to be well in hand. As one of the world's largest producers of vaccines, India also magnanimously began donating vaccines to its less-well-off neighbours.

It's a familiar scene; countries that succeeded in gaining a level of control over the global pandemic looked outside their borders at neighbours struggling to achieve what they did, and generously offered assistance. Some countries when China was in the throes of the first infections with the pathogen that originated in Wuhan, sent respirators, masks and anything else they had to give assistance, at a time when their own countries had not yet been engulfed by the fast-spreading virus that all too soon hit Europe and North America, sending Italy and Spain into a headspin.

Things have not proceeded well for India. To a good degree perhaps it was predictable; in fact India with its great population of 1.35 billion people was initially thought of as a potential tinderbox of opportunity for any threatening virus, and it seemed puzzling at first that it hadn't exploded into a firestorm of cases. It's almost as though the virus has a sense of dramatic timing, keeping the world in suspense, and then striking. It has struck India through a second venomous wave that seems unstoppable.

 

India is now experiencing what Italy did a year ago, in the shortage of hospital beds and medical oxygen. Italy became a symbol of the worst that the SARS-CoV-2 virus could inflict on humanity, but worse was to come when the U.S. and Brazil began their own epic struggles for survival against a beast of a virus. The world was given a hopeful boost of encouragement at early news that vaccines were in development, and then a vision of recovery as a handful of pharmaceutical manufacturers saw their products succeed in third level trials leading to approvals for mass inoculations.

 

Confidence was high for those countries with vaccine-producing facilities and the logistics of production and distribution and contract-signing proceeded apace. With India's own national vaccine producer on contract with AstraZeneca and the assurance that it could handle the demand for its product both at home and abroad. Now, however, for a week of succeeding days hundreds of thousands of new COVID cases have been logged for the world's second largest population. There are now 18 million in India infected with COVID-19.

 

Each day over 300,000 people test positive for the virus. The health facilities and crematoriums are working on overdrive and they are still being overwhelmed. On Wednesday alone, 360,960 new cases of COVID were tallied, horrifying India itself and the world around it, impelling other nations to begin sending relief to India, medical equipment, medical oxygen, respirators, personal protection equipment. The numbers are staggering, but according to experts these are not true numbers which are in fact, many times greater than the official tallies.

 

Yesterday alone, 3,293 Indians died of COVID-19. There is one death from COVID reported in Delhi state every four minutes. Ambulances convey bodies of COVID-19 victims to temporary crematorium facilities set up in public parks, parking lots and anywhere else they can be installed to relieve the pressure. Bodies are burned on funeral pyres set up in row after row. 

 

A mass cremation this week in New Delhi for people who died from the virus.  Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times

In the Delhi suburb of Gurgaon, Genesis hospital informs families they must take their family members elsewhere in view of its supplies of oxygen fast depleting. "The hospital is trying to get fresh oxygen but we are told we have to make alternative arrangements", stated Anjali Cerejo who must now attempt to find another bed elsewhere for her father who had been admitted to the hospital which now is unable to keep him as a patient. 

There is a burgeoning black market in operation however, where scarce supplies, including medical oxygen can be had at prices far, far in excess of what their usual rate is. For those who can afford those astronomical prices there may be a hope, but for the vast numbers of other afflicted people when the public hospitals and clinics are unable to respond, there is no hope. 

 

It is a scene of bedlam as people are lined up on trolleys, in cars and rickshaws with their family members holding oxygen cylinders for them, desperately awaiting an empty bed in the hospital.

India, according to the World Health Organization's weekly epidemiological update, accounts for 38 percent of the 5.7 million cases of COVID-19 reported worldwide last week. The B.1.617 variant of the virus that surfaced in India has a higher growth rate than other variants in the country, according to early modelling, suggesting increased transmissibility. 

India's best hope lies in vaccinating its vast population, in experts' opinion. Registrations were open for everyone in the population above age 18 to be vaccinated. Ironically and tragically, the world's biggest producer of vaccines is vastly short of stocks to inoculate the estimated 600 million people now eligible, added to the efforts to inoculate India's elderly, and those with other compromising medical conditions.

Several states in India have reported a shortage of coronavirus vaccine doses. AP Photo: Rafiq Maqbool

"I think the highest priority, you know, to be quite frank, has to be India."

"I mean, their situation is so desperate and the cases continue to rise [validating the decision to retain vaccines produced in India to be used in India]."

"This is a crisis now at a global level [but countries in Africa awaiting doses supplied to COVAX by India must wait]."

Salim Abdool Karim, epidemiologist, Columbia University 

The Serum Institute in Pune, India, is the world's largest vaccine maker. Supplied: The Serum Institute