The World Health Organization has ruled out a laboratory accident as the cause of the coronavirus pandemic, say- ing it was “extremely unlikely” that the pathogen leaked from a Chinese facility.
A WHO scientific team has spent the past few weeks in Wuhan to learn more about the origins of the virus.
It has also visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the subject of unfounded allegations that the Sars-Cov-2 virus that caused Covid-19 might have leaked from its biosafety laboratory. Peter Ben Embarek, head of the visit- ing WHO team, said it had concluded the evidence weighed against the insti- tute or another of the city’s labs being the source.
While “accidents do happen”, virus leaks from high-level biosafety labs were “extremely rare” and the Wuhan Institute of Virology set-up made it “veryunlikely that an escape could hap pen from a place like that”, he said.
The most plausible explanation was the accepted theory that the virus origi- nated in bats and jumped to an as yet unknown intermediate host species before infecting humans, he added.
Beijing’s careful management of the trip and a delay of more than a year between the virus being detected and the team’s arrival in Wuhan have raised doubts over the investigation’s ability to draw hard conclusions concerning the issue of the virus’s origin.
Embarek acknowledged the field research conducted in Wuhan did not.
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