Mick Hartley

The latest on the origins of Covid-19, from the head of the WHO investigation:

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.” 

So they caved in to Chinese pressure on the question of a lab leak. Understandable, perhaps, but still something of a disgrace for a supposedly scientific enquiry into a matter of such importance.

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.

And it turns out that there's a second lab in Wuhan:

Dr Embarek 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.

“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.”

The plot thickens.

Update: see also Ian Birrell's latest at UnHerd – Science journals have been corrupted by China.