The head of China’s coronavirus research program in Wuhan has demanded an apology from Donald Trump for suggesting the virus leaked from her lab.
Shi Zhengli, who is head of the team investigating bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Research Institute, denied ever seeing the virus currently sweeping the world until after the initial outbreak had begun.
In most-detailed stated since the start of the pandemic, Shi said: ‘Trump’s claim that SARS-CoV-2 was leaked from our institute totally contradicts the facts.
‘It jeopardizes and affects our academic work and personal lives. He owes us an apology.’
Shi Zhengli, head of bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (pictured), has denied rumours that the virus currently sweeping the world escaped from her lab
Shi (left) demanded an apology from Donald Trump after he claimed to have seen evidence the virus leaked from the lab, saying it ‘totally contradicts the facts’
Asked how she can be sure, Shi said the pandemic virus does not match any samples held in her lab and that all staff have been tested for both active coroanvirus infections and antibodies, and found to be negative.
Shi gave the answer in response to a series of written questions that were emailed to her by Science magazine two months ago.
The answers were formulated with information officers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which oversees the lab, and are also likely to have been vetted by the communist government.
However, experts who reviewed her responses say they do provide some useful information on Shi’s thinking about the virus.
In her response, which is the most detailed Shi has given since the start of the pandemic, she said the first time her lab came into contact with SARS-CoV-2 was on December 30.
Her team were sent samples taken from patients suffering from a ‘pneumonia of unknown origin’ in Wuhan, and were asked to investigate.
Shi said they ‘quickly identified the pathogen’, which is the virus that was subsequently named SARS-CoV-2.
She added that SARS-CoV-2 did not match any sample held in her lab, but was similar to one other virus her team had identified, which they named RaTG13.
She said that the sample had come from a bat that was found in the Hubei region in 2013, and was 96.2 per cent similar to SARS-CoV-2.
However, she added that – in virus terms – a 96 per cent similarity is still a large difference, and means the two likely shared a common ancestor but have been evolving separately for at least 20 and possibly as long as 50 years.
Shi (pictured center) said SARS-CoV-2, the current pandemic virus, was first brought to her lab on December 30 last year and did not match any of the samples she held
Shi said SARS-CoV-2 likely evolved in bats but probably passed through an intermediary host before ending up in humans.
One theory is that the bat could have passed the virus on to a pangolin – a mammal whose scales are used in traditional Chinese medicine – and then on to humans.
Shi admitted it is a possibility, but said it is currently impossible to tell which animals it passed through before getting into humans.
Unlike some researchers, Shi does not believe the wet market in Wuhan where the first cluster of cases was detected marked the first cases of the virus.
She explained that her team had taken multiple samples from the market, and while traces of the virus had been found in sewage and on door handles – none had been found in animal samples.
Shi added that samples were also taken from animals at farms around Hubei province, and that no trace of the disease was found there, either.
That, along with years spent capturing and testing bats for coronaviruses in Hubei without discovering this virus before it spread, leads her to believe it did not originate within the province at all.
But asked where it might have originated, she said only: ‘I can’t make any conclusions before we have solid evidence.
‘Tracing the virus’s origins is a scientific question, which ought to be answered by scientists based on solid data and scientific evidence.’
SARS-CoV-2, which has become known simply as ‘coronavirus’, first emerged in Wuhan in December last year and has since spread around the globe.
Almost 17million infections have been confirmed worldwide in almost every country on earth, with more than 660,000 confirmed fatalities.
Due to issues with testing and some patients not showing symptoms, the true number of infections and deaths is not known – but is likely to be far higher.
Shi added that all staff working at the lab have been tested for active coronavirus infections and antibodies and were found to be negative, rubbishing speculation that they could have been the first patients (file image)
The virus has prompted unprecedented economic shutdowns, first in China and then worldwide, which have devastated the world economy and likely sparked one of the biggest recessions in history.
While treatments for the virus are improving, there is no known cure and experts warn that a vaccine could be months away – and may not be fully effective.
Donald Trump, whose handling of the crisis has been heavily criticised both in the US and globally, claimed in May that he had ‘seen evidence’ the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab, without revealing what that evidence was.
The claim was then repeated by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, before both men dropped the talking point in subsequent interviews.
It is now thought that Trump had seen a report from a Pentagon contractor claiming that traffic patterns and mobile data gathered around the lab suggested some kind of leak took place around October 2019.
However, the report has been widely debunked by specialists in the open-source intelligence community, as reported by the Daily Beast.
The true source of the virus remains a mystery, amid calls for a global investigation into its origins.
China has so far refused to agree to those calls, but two WHO experts are currently in Beijing trying to lay the groundwork for such a probe.