Intelligence officials weigh possibility coronavirus escaped from a Chinese lab

WASHINGTON — Although the U.S. intelligence community early on dismissed the notion that the coronavirus is a synthesized bioweapon, it is still weighing the possibility that the pandemic might have been touched off by an accident at a research facility rather than by an infection from a live-animal market, according to nine current and former intelligence and national security officials familiar with ongoing investigations.

After extensive research, scientists in the U.S. and elsewhere have determined that the new strain of the coronavirus discovered in China in December is, as Chinese officials have maintained, of natural origin, but they are taking seriously that its route to human infection may have started in a lab in Wuhan — that a natural virus sample being studied at a research laboratory in Wuhan infected a researcher who spread it in the community, or it escaped via hazardous waste or a lab animal.

Even Chinese researchers initially pointed to the possibility of a lab accident in a study published in February on ResearchGate. And the British government is also reportedly considering the same possibility.

Some the factors that gave rise to the suspicion are the lack of information coming from China, Beijing’s quick denials of involvement, and the decision to immediately identify the Wuhan Seafood Market as the source when, in fact, some of the very first cases of COVID-19 were not linked to the market, and scientists have not traced the initial exposure back to any specific animal at the Wuhan Seafood Market, which was formally closed on Jan. 1.

There are also a number of important research institutions in Wuhan where infectious diseases are studied. This includes the Wuhan National Biosafety Lab, the first publicly acknowledged lab with the highest biosafety standards; the Wuhan branch of the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, home to one of the world’s top research groups on bat coronaviruses, where scientists have studied thousands of samples.

However, there are reasons to be wary of that theory. It may serve as a propaganda tool for politicians who want to fan tensions with China, and many scientists still argue that a natural outbreak is the most likely possibility.

Writing in Nature, a team of five scientists argued that the new virus, SARS-Cov-2, emerged too recently to have been identified, isolated from other virus samples, cultured and then accidentally released from a lab. Because there is so much variety in types of coronavirus in bats and other species, virus specimens are “massively under-sampled,” wrote the authors, making it less likely Chinese researchers discovered this specific strain.

Still, finding the source of the outbreak could also be vital in understanding how it spread and how to prevent the next potential pandemic.

The new virus’s genome most closely resembles a bat coronavirus discovered in July 2013 in Yunnan province in China, information made public by the Wuhan Institute of Virology only on Jan. 23 of this year. The progenitor of the current virus, says Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, could be either the 2013 bat sample or another bat coronavirus that is closely related and hasn’t been discovered or disclosed as of today.

In December, Chinese health officials began to publicly worry that the mysterious cluster of pneumonia patients in Hubei province might be a sign of something ominous. On Dec. 31, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission formally notified the World Health Organization’s country office in China about the worrying trend.

Since those initial reports, more than a million people around the world have tested positive for the new, highly infectious strain of coronavirus and its resulting disease, COVID-19. More than 100,000 have died.

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