State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat
coronaviruses
Josh Rogin
Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy
officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several
times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety
at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats.
The cables have fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether
this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus — even though conclusive
proof has yet to emerge.
In January 2018, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing took the unusual step of
repeatedly sending U.S. science diplomats to the Wuhan Institute of Virology
(WIV), which had in 2015 become China’s first laboratory to achieve the highest
level of international bioresearch safety (known as BSL-4).
WIV issued a news release in English about the last of these visits, which
occurred on March 27, 2018. The U.S. delegation was led by Jamison Fouss, the
consul general in Wuhan, and Rick Switzer, the embassy’s counselor of
environment, science, technology and health. Last week, WIV erased that
statement from its website, though it remains archived on the Internet.
What the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much that
they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified
back to Washington.
The cables warned about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab and
proposed more attention and help. The first cable, which I obtained, also warns
that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission
represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.
“During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new
lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and
investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,”
states the Jan. 19, 2018, cable, which was drafted by two officials from the
embassy’s environment, science and health sections who met with the WIV
scientists. (The State Department declined to comment on this and other details
of the story.)
The Chinese researchers at WIV were receiving assistance from the Galveston
National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch and other U.S.
organizations, but the Chinese requested additional help. The cables argued
that the United States should give the Wuhan lab further support, mainly
because its research on bat coronaviruses was important but also dangerous.
As the cable noted, the U.S. visitors met with Shi Zhengli, the head of the
research project, who had been publishing studies related to bat coronaviruses
for many years. In November 2017, just before the U.S. officials’ visit, Shi’s
team had published research showing that horseshoe bats they had collected from
a cave in Yunnan province were very likely from the same bat population that
spawned the SARS coronavirus in 2003.
“Most importantly,” the cable states, “the researchers also showed that various
SARS-like coronaviruses can interact with ACE2, the human receptor identified
for SARS-coronavirus. This finding strongly suggests that SARS-like
coronaviruses from bats can be transmitted to humans to cause SARS-like
diseases. From a public health perspective, this makes the continued
surveillance of SARS-like coronaviruses in bats and study of the animal-human
interface critical to future emerging coronavirus outbreak prediction and
prevention.”
The research was designed to prevent the next SARS-like pandemic by
anticipating how it might emerge. But even in 2015, other scientists questioned
whether Shi’s team was taking unnecessary risks. In October 2014, the U.S.
government had imposed a moratorium on funding of any research that makes a
virus more deadly or contagious, known as “gain-of-function” experiments.
The coronavirus pandemic has led to temporary closures of educational
institutions, the cancellation or postponement of major events, and poses a
significant threat to businesses and economies around the world. At this time
of need, many famous people are stepping up to help those affected by making
donations or showing acts of kindness. Click through to take a look at some
well-known people helping out during the pandemic.
As many have pointed out, there is no evidence that the virus now plaguing the
world was engineered; scientists largely agree it came from animals. But that
is not the same as saying it didn’t come from the lab, which spent years
testing bat coronaviruses in animals, said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at
the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley.
“The cable tells us that there have long been concerns about the possibility of
the threat to public health that came from this lab’s research, if it was not
being adequately conducted and protected,” he said.
There are similar concerns about the nearby Wuhan Center for Disease Control
and Prevention lab, which operates at biosecurity level 2, a level
significantly less secure than the level-4 standard claimed by the Wuhan
Insititute of Virology lab, Xiao said. That’s important because the Chinese
government still refuses to answer basic questions about the origin of the
novel coronavirus while suppressing any attempts to examine whether either lab
was involved.
Sources familiar with the cables said they were meant to sound an alarm about
the grave safety concerns at the WIV lab, especially regarding its work with
bat coronaviruses. The embassy officials were calling for more U.S. attention
to this lab and more support for it, to help it fix its problems.
“The cable was a warning shot,” one U.S. official said. “They were begging
people to pay attention to what was going on.”
No extra assistance to the labs was provided by the U.S. government in response
to these cables. The cables began to circulate again inside the administration
over the past two months as officials debated whether the lab could be the
origin of the pandemic and what the implications would be for the U.S. pandemic
response and relations with China.
Inside the Trump administration, many national security officials have long
suspected either the WIV or the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention
lab was the source of the novel coronavirus outbreak. According to the New York
Times, the intelligence community has provided no evidence to confirm this. But
one senior administration official told me that the cables provide one more
piece of evidence to support the possibility that the pandemic is the result of
a lab accident in Wuhan.
“The idea that it was just a totally natural occurrence is circumstantial. The
evidence it leaked from the lab is circumstantial. Right now, the ledger on the
side of it leaking from the lab is packed with bullet points and there’s almost
nothing on the other side,” the official said.
As my colleague David Ignatius noted, the Chinese government’s original story —
that the virus emerged from a seafood market in Wuhan — is shaky. Research by
Chinese experts published in the Lancet in January showed the first known
patient, identified on Dec. 1, had no connection to the market, nor did more
than one-third of the cases in the first large cluster. Also, the market didn’t
sell bats.
Shi and other WIV researchers have categorically denied this lab was the origin
for the novel coronavirus. On Feb. 3, her team was the first to publicly report
the virus known as 2019-nCoV was a bat-derived coronavirus.
The Chinese government, meanwhile, has put a total lockdown on information
related to the virus origins. Beijing has yet to provide U.S. experts with
samples of the novel coronavirus collected from the earliest cases. The
Shanghai lab that published the novel coronavirus genome on Jan. 11 was quickly
shut down by authorities for “rectification.” Several of the doctors and
journalists who reported on the spread early on have disappeared.
On Feb. 14, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for a new biosecurity law to be
accelerated. On Wednesday, CNN reported the Chinese government has placed
severe restrictions requiring approval before any research institution
publishes anything on the origin of the novel coronavirus.
The origin story is not just about blame. It’s crucial to understanding how the
novel coronavirus pandemic started because that informs how to prevent the next
one. The Chinese government must be transparent and answer the questions about
the Wuhan labs because they are vital to our scientific understanding of the
virus, said Xiao.
We don’t know whether the novel coronavirus originated in the Wuhan lab, but
the cable pointed to the danger there and increases the impetus to find out, he
said.
“I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory. I think it’s a legitimate question
that needs to be investigated and answered,” he said. “To understand exactly
how this originated is critical knowledge for preventing this from happening in
the future.”
EM -> { Trump for 2020 }
On the 49th Parallel
Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in anarchy"
Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja na Dk. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda ni katika
machafuko"
_______________________________________________
Ugandanet mailing list
Ugandanet@kym.net
http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/ugandanet
UGANDANET is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/
All Archives can be found at http://www.mail-archive.com/ugandanet@kym.net/
The above comments and data are owned by whoever posted them (including
attachments if any). The List's Host is not responsible for them in any way.
---------------------------------------
