After a two-year investigation, a government report concluded dangerous virus research in China ‘is the most likely origin of the Covid-19 pandemic.’
The 525-page report from the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released its final findings Monday and presented several of the ‘strongest arguments’ to support the lab leak theory.
They wrote there are biological characteristics of the virus that are not found in nature; there is evidence to support a single introduction of the virus to humans, not multiple zoonotic spillover events; and Wuhan – where the virus was first detected – is home to China’s largest SARS research lab – the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
The report also cited US intelligence reports that several researchers at the WIV were sick with a Covid-like virus in the fall of 2019 notes a lack of direct evidence linking the virus to animals at the nearby Wuhan wet market or its supply chain, a theory that has prevailed among a wide swathe of scientists.
WIV has long been at the center of the contentious lab leak debate because researchers there routinely tinker with and genetically modify viruses to become more virulent or transmissible.
And the subcommittee’s report is not the first to suggest the Covid-19 pandemic began in a Wuhan lab.
An analysis of data from a Harvard-based molecular scientist outlined five reasons earlier this year that Covid was most likely manufactured by Chinese scientists.
A third report concluded the virus leaked from a Chinese lab with a 70 percent certainty and documents reviewed by DailyMail.com laid out plans to ‘engineer spike proteins’ to infect human cells that would then be ‘inserted into SARS-Covid backbones’ at the WIV in December 2018.
Dr Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-author of the book Viral: The search for the Origin of Covid-19 outlined five reasons why the pandemic likely stemmed from a lab accident in China
The expansive report marks the latest development of years of investigation into the mysterious origins of the pandemic-causing coronavirus.
A growing number of lawmakers, public health experts, and federal agencies point to the WIV as the origin because scientists there research pathogens critics say cross the line into dangerous.
This kind of gain-of-function (GOF) research often involves genetically modifying viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 to see how they could become more effective at infecting people and making them seriously ill.
Proponents of the lab leak theory believe the never-before-seen virus was designed to infect humans on a major scale as part of China’s gain-of-function research program.
The Republican-led committee’s report echoes this theory, long rebuffed by institutional scientists like Drs Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins, former head of the NIH, and academic researchers.
In the report, committee members conclude the Covid-19 virus possesses features that would not occur naturally, specifically a furin cleavage site.
This furin cleavage site is absent in other closely related types of coronaviruses and people argue Covid couldn’t have developed this feature naturally – so it must have been designed in a lab to have it.
In 2018, scientists sought to create a novel virus with features that closely match those of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid, which some say serves as a blueprint for Covid – and the resulting pandemic
Led by Dr Shi Zhengli, known as bat lady because of her extensive work on bat viruses, scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been working with coronaviruses for decades
The argument for GOF research is that it helps scientists understand how viruses might evolve or adapt to humans, and greater knowledge about what kinds of treatments and vaccines would work at preventing or curing infection.
But Dr Kristian Andersen, a Danish evolutionary biologist who has undergone a very public shift in opinion when it comes to the origins of Covid, testified to the committee last year that he advocated to his colleagues in infectious disease research that a lab leak was not only possible but probable.
When asked about the contents of the call, Dr Andersen said that he was concerned about the fact that WIV researchers were trying to grow viruses from bats or isolate them from bat samples in labs at biosafety level (BSL) 2, which are considered medium risk and don’t require as much safety gear as higher-level labs.
The committee concluded: ‘The WIV has a track record of engaging in this type of airborne viral research under low biosafety conditions… In the US, this type of research would be conducted under BSL-3 protocols, which require stricter personal respirator use at all times and more protective equipment.’
The massive report further pokes holes in the idea that Covid resulted from a chance animal-to-animal-to-human transmission event at the nearby Wuhan wet market.
Despite extensive investigations by US and World Health Organization teams, no animals at the market or in its supply chain were found to carry the virus, weakening the idea that the wet market was the point of origin.
House members quoted Dr Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University, who said: ‘The outbreak at the Wuhan market probably happened after the virus had already been circulating in humans.’
Signs have repeatedly pointed to those first humans being infected in the lab itself months before the virus became a public health concern.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology is at the center of the Covid-19 lab leak theory due to its research on coronaviruses, its proximity to the outbreak, and concerns over the safety of its lab practices
According to the report: ‘The US government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illness.’
The report added that the WHO appears to have done nothing to act on early warnings about a mystery illness out of Taiwan as early as December 31, 2019.
When Taiwanese health officials asked for more information ‘about atypical pneumonia cases reported in Wuhan,’ the organization ‘never followed up with information.’
The lab leak vs natural origin debate has raged on for more than four years and 25million lives lost globally.
Supporting the subcommittee’s report is the research from Dr Chan, whose work was analyzed in a rare pro-lab leak piece in the opinion paper of The New York Times.
She concluded the location of the outbreak relative to the coronavirus lab, the unique makeup of the virus, previous research conducted by the WIV, lax biosafety protocols and lack of evidence the virus is present in animals all point to a lab leak.
Additionally, researchers from Australia and Arizona used a risk analysis tool- which they described as the most comprehensive yet – to determine the chances the SARS-CoV-2 virus was of ‘unnatural’ or ‘natural’ origin.
The team compared the characteristics of the virus and the pandemic to 11 criteria that analyzed things like the rarity of a virus, the timing of a pandemic, the population infected, the spread of a virus and the unexpected symptoms of a virus.
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Based on the nature of Covid, researchers assigned a score to each category – less than 50 percent meant the pandemic would be classified as a natural outbreak, but 50 or more percent would mean the pandemic was an unnatural outbreak.
Covid received a score of 68 percent.
The study said: ‘The origin of [Covid] is contentious. Most studies have focused on a zoonotic origin, but definitive evidence such as an intermediary animal host is lacking.’
However, just because Covid received a higher score, the researchers said the ‘risk assessment cannot prove the origin of [Covid], but shows that the possibility of a laboratory origin cannot be easily dismissed.’
Furthermore, DailyMail.com has previously reported on records – obtained by FOIA requests – that laid out plans for grant to ‘engineer spike proteins’ to infect human cells that would then be ‘inserted into SARS-Covid backbones’ at the WIV in December 2018.
It proposed engineering high-risk coronaviruses of the same species as the original SARS to preempt a human spillover and develop vaccine technology and strategies.
The researchers sought to synthesize spike proteins with furin cleavage sites that had been designed to bind to human receptors more easily.
The furin has been one of the focal points of debate about Covid-19’s origin, with some experts claiming it could only have been acquired through lab experiments.
The grant then proposed attaching the furin to coronavirus strains and infecting mice to see how ill it would make them.
Ultimately, the application was denied by the US Department of Defense, but critics said the plans laid out in the proposal serve as a ‘blueprint’ for how to create Covid.
The report concluded: ‘It is, therefore, more than just a coincidence that COVID-19 emerged from the city with a lab preparing to conduct this research under cost-effective yet risky BSL-2 protocols.’
