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The US agency's assessment that supports the theory that the covid-19 leaked from a laboratory raises more questions than answers, and generates a backlash from China

2023-03-03T16:17:28.127Z


The US Department of Energy's assessment that covid-19 arose in a laboratory accident in China has reignited a fierce debate, in which there are more questions than answers. The agency has not publicly provided new evidence to support the fact. 


The FBI points to a Chinese laboratory as the origin of covid-19 1:53

(CNN) --

The US Department of Energy's assessment that Covid-19 likely arose from a laboratory accident in China has reignited a fierce debate and put the spotlight back on the origin of the pandemic. .

But the determination that this is a "low confidence" assessment, made in a recently updated classified report, leaves open more questions than answers, as the department has not publicly provided new supporting evidence.

It also drew fierce rejection from China.

“We urge the United States to respect science and facts, stop politicizing this issue, stop intelligence- and politically-driven origin tracing,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Wednesday.

  • ANALYSIS |

    What we know about the "laboratory leak theory" of the covid-19 virus

The Department of Energy assessment is part of a broader US effort in which President Joe Biden asked intelligence agencies – in 2021 – to investigate the origins of the new coronavirus, first detected in the city Wuhan China.

That general assessment by the intelligence community was inconclusive, and then, as now, a decisive link between the virus and a specific animal or other option has yet to be established, as China continues to obstruct international investigations into its origins. of the virus.

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Four agencies and the US National Intelligence Council assessed with low confidence that the virus jumped from animals to humans through natural exposure, while one assessed with moderate confidence that the pandemic was the result of an accident. laboratory related.

Three other Intelligence Community agencies could not rally around any explanation without additional information, according to a declassified version of the 2021 report.

Most agencies remain undecided or lean toward the natural origin of the virus, a hypothesis that is also widely supported by scientists with experience in the field.

But the change by the US Department of Energy has deepened the division in the Intelligence Community, especially as the FBI director commented publicly this week for the first time on the similar determination his agency has made with "medium confidence ”.

Intelligence agencies can perform low, medium, or high confidence assessments.

A low confidence assessment generally means that the information obtained is not reliable enough or too fragmented to make a more definitive judgment.

And while the assessment and new commentary have brought the theory back into the spotlight, no agency has released any evidence or information to support its findings.

That raises crucial questions, and again highlights the remaining unknowns and the need for further investigation.

New evidence?

Scientists largely believe that the virus likely arose from a natural spread from an infected animal to people, as many viruses have in the past, though they acknowledge the need for more research on all options.

Many have questioned the lack of published data to substantiate the claims.

Virologist Thea Fischer, who traveled to Wuhan in 2021 as part of a World Health Organization (WHO) investigation into the origins of Covid-19 and who remains part of the organism's ongoing tracing efforts, said it was “very important” that any new assessment related to the origin of the virus is documented with evidence.

  • Covid-19: the US Department of Energy assesses whether the virus was a laboratory leak

“[These are] strong allegations against a public research laboratory in China and cannot be sustained without substantial evidence,” said Fischer, a professor at the University of Copenhagen.

"Hopefully they will share it with the WHO soon so that the evidence can be known and evaluated by international health experts, like all other evidence on the origin of the pandemic."

A senior US intelligence official told The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the Department of Energy's new assessment, that the agency's update was made in light of new intelligence, a further study of the academic literature and in consultation with experts outside of government.

The idea that the virus may have arisen in a laboratory accident became more prominent as attention was drawn to novel coronavirus research being conducted at local institutions, such as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

And it grew further amid failed attempts to find irrefutable evidence to show which animal might have transmitted the virus to people at Wuhan's Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, the location linked to a spate of early known cases, in the middle of limits to do a follow-up investigation.

Wuhan Institute of Virology.

However, some experts who have been heavily involved in examining existing data are skeptical of the new assessment that gives more weight to the leak theory.

"Given that much of the data we have points to a spillover event that occurred in the Huanan market, at the end of 2019, I doubt there is anything very significant or new information that would change our current understanding of the facts," David Robertson said. , a professor in the School of Infection and Immunity at the University of Glasgow, who was involved in recent research with findings that support the theory of natural origin.

He noted that market-focused locations of the first human cases, positive environmental samples, and confirmation that virus-susceptible live animals were for sale, are among the evidence supporting the natural origins theory, while there is no data to support the idea of ​​a laboratory leak.

"The scope of this evidence is continually lost [in media discussion]... when in fact we know a lot about what happened, and possibly more than in other outbreaks," Robertson said.

A medical worker takes samples during a COVID-19 screening test at a residential block on August 6, 2021 in Wuhan, Hubei province, China.

(Credit: Getty Images)

The Chinese answer

Efforts to understand how the pandemic began have been further complicated by China's lack of transparency, especially as the question of origin became another bitter sticking point in the escalating US-China tensions of recent years. .

Beijing has blocked long-term, robust international field investigations and refused to allow a laboratory audit, which could bring clarity to the matter, and has been reluctant to share details and data on domestic investigations to uncover the cause of the pandemic.

However, it repeatedly maintains that it has been transparent and cooperative with the WHO.

Chinese officials carefully monitored the only WHO-backed research they allowed on the ground in 2021, citing disease control measures to restrict visiting experts to their hotel rooms for half of their trip and prevent them from sharing meals with their colleagues. Chinese counterparts, blocking an opportunity for a more informal exchange of information.

Citing data protection, Beijing has also refused to share its own investigative measures, such as testing blood samples stored in Wuhan or scouring hospital data for possible "patient zeros," being verified by researchers out of the country.

  • The FBI defends that the virus that causes covid-19 came from a Wuhan laboratory and China asks the US not to politicize the matter

China has fiercely denied that the virus arose from a laboratory accident and has repeatedly tried to claim that it could have arrived in the country from elsewhere, including a US laboratory, without offering any evidence to support that claim.

But a senior WHO official called publicly last month for "more cooperation and collaboration with our colleagues in China to advance studies that need to be done in China," including analyzes of markets and farms that might have been involved.

"These studies need to be done in China and we need the cooperation of our colleagues there to advance our general understanding," WHO's technical lead for Covid-19, Maria Van Kerkhove, told a news conference.

When asked about the Department of Energy's assessment, a WHO representative said the organization and its origin-trace advisory body "will continue to review all available scientific evidence to help us advance knowledge about the origin of the SARS-CoV-2, and we call on China and the scientific community to undertake the necessary studies in that direction."

“Until we have more evidence, all hypotheses remain on the table,” the representative said.

CNN's Hannah Rabinowitz, Jeremy Herb and Natasha Bertrand contributed to this report.

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Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2023-03-03

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