COVID-19 lab leak theory cannot be ruled out, leading scientists say

Record ID: 1616154

  • Title: COVID-19 lab leak theory cannot be ruled out, leading scientists say
  • Date: 14th May 2021
  • Summary: PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (MAY 14, 2021) (REUTERS VIA ZOOM) (SOUNDBITE) (English) CO-AUTHOR OF LETTER IN SCIENCE MAGAZINE, "INVESTIGATE THE ORIGINS OF COVID-19" AND PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE, IMMUNOLOGY AND MICROBIOLOGY AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY DAVID RELMAN SAYING: "It's very difficult for my colleagues to even raise the question as to the origin of the pandemic, beca
  • Embargoed: 28th May 2021 23:23
  • Keywords: COVID David Relman Stanford Wuhan coronavirus leaked from lab origins pandemic virus
  • Location: PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA + NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES / WUHAN + XIANNING, HUBEI PROVINCE, CHINA / FRANKFURT + BERLIN, GERMANY / CREMONA, ITALY / IQUITOS, PERU / UNKNOWN LOCATION
  • City: PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA + NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES / WUHAN + XIANNING, HUBEI PROVINCE, CHINA / FRANKFURT + BERLIN, GERMANY / CREMONA, ITALY / IQUITOS, PERU / UNKNOWN LOCATION
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Health/Medicine,United States
  • Reuters ID: LVA00AECXOV2F
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: The origin of the novel coronavirus is still unclear and the theory that it was caused by a laboratory leak needs to be taken seriously until there is a rigorous data-led investigation that proves it wrong, a group of leading scientists said.
    COVID-19, which emerged in China in late 2019, has killed 3.34 million people, cost the world trillions of dollars in lost income and upended normal life for billions of people.
    "More investigation is still needed to determine the origin of the pandemic," said the 18 scientists, including Ravindra Gupta, a clinical microbiologist at the University of Cambridge, and Jesse Bloom, who studies the evolution of viruses at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
    "Theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable," the scientists including David Relman, professor of microbiology at Stanford, said in a letter to the journal Science. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1
    The authors of the letter said the World Health Organization's investigation into the origins of the virus had not made a "balanced consideration" of the theory that it may have come from a laboratory incident.
    "Humans are fallible. So it's absolutely reasonable to think that some other laboratory also had an accident," Relman told Reuters in an interview.
    In its final report, written jointly with Chinese scientists, a WHO-led team that spent four weeks in and around Wuhan in January and February said the virus had probably been transmitted from bats to humans through another animal, and that a lab leak was "extremely unlikely" as a cause.
    But there are myriad different ideas about the origin of the virus including a series of conspiracy theories.
    Relman said he feels adherence to the scientific method is the only acceptable path forward.
    "I think there's an opportunity where people on all sides of this issue can agree that science has not had a chance to properly look at all of the possible, plausible explanations and undertake the kind of investigation that I think we can and ought."
    (Production by: Kat Jackson, Roselle Chen, Soren Larson and Dan Fastenberg)
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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