More than three years after the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, the source of the virus appears to be emerging. The laboratory leak theory, which was initially considered a conspiracy theory, is gaining more and more traction among the scientific community worldwide as the natural source clues that have finally emerged recently, deliberately withheld by Chinese authorities.
The latest turning point is that some international researchers analysed the early data of the COVID-19 pandemic uploaded by Chinese scientists to foreign databases and found traces of raccoon dogs during the spread of COVID-19 to humans. Animals may be intermediate hosts. The researchers believe that the Chinese scientists’ data unexpectedly provided some information about the virus’s origin.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) noted the surprising revelation that the latest Chinese information provided some “clues” about the origin but not complete answers yet. The WHO urged China to release all information related to the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic after new findings were briefly shared on an international database used to track pathogens.
Responding to a question about the origin of COVID-19, WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the virus’s origin could not be determined without full access to the information China has. He called upon Beijing to share as much data as possible and added that until that happened, all hypotheses remained on the table.
“All hypotheses are on the table. That is where the WHO stands, and that is why we have been asking Beijing to cooperate on this,” Tedros said. “If they are willing to do that, then we will know what happened. “What or how it (the outbreak) started,” he said bluntly.
China notified the WHO that the COVID-19 virus was first detected in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. Initially, the outside world suspected that the virus was related to the Nanhua Seafood Market. WHO has been working with scientists to learn more about the earliest cases in 2019, such as the whereabouts of infected people. The WHO also asked the US to provide raw data, and a recent study funded by the US Department of Energy suggested that a leak from a Wuhan laboratory may have caused the COVID-19 pandemic.
Foreign scientists discover new clues from papers by Chinese counterparts
The backdrop for the WHO’s tougher rhetoric against Beijing came as foreign scientists uncovered new clues in papers by their Chinese counterparts. Researchers at the Sorbonne University in France discovered some new data in Gisaid (Global Influenza Sharing Database) on March 4. These data were submitted by Liu Peipei, a researcher at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, in June 2022 but appeared to have come from a German trusteeship foundation. French researchers using bioinformatics engineering tools, quickly revealed the presence of many animals in these biological samples, the most notable of which was a species called the raccoon dog. They believe this animal is likely an intermediate host for spreading the virus. On March 20-21, they published the report compiled by the analysis.
However, after they notified China of their findings, the downloaded database became inaccessible to the outside world. Strangely enough, on March 28, the Chinese Academy of Sciences published an article by Liu Peipei and others covering the above-mentioned deleted data.
Chinese officials offered a lengthy rebuttal to accusations by the WHO that they had been slow to share data about the possible origins of the coronavirus, blasting some in the organisation as political “tools” whose remarks were “intolerable.” However, WHO officials said China’s “lack of data disclosure is simply inexcusable.”