16 May 2021
The authors argue that current evidence is not strong enough to determine if the virus originated from nature or from a lab leak.
Security personnel stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan as members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus make a visit to the institute on February 3, 2021.
(Image credit: HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images)
More than a dozen researchers have published a letter in a top scientific journal calling for further investigations into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
In the letter, published Thursday (May 13) in the journal
Carl Zimmer and Apoorva Mandavilli, The New York Times Published: 16 May 2021 05:12 PM BdST Updated: 16 May 2021 05:12 PM BdST Coronavirus test samples are loaded into a workstation in a lab at Duke University in Durham, NC, Feb 3, 2021. The country has managed to avoid a variant-fuelled spike in coronavirus cases. The New York Times
On Dec 29, a National Guardsman in Colorado became the first known case in the United States of a contagious new variant of the coronavirus. ); }
The news was unsettling. The variant, called B.1.1.7, had roiled Britain, was beginning to surge in Europe and threatened to do the same in the United States. And although scientists did not know it yet, other mutants were also cropping up around the country. They included variants that had devastated South Africa and Brazil and that seemed to be able to sidestep the immune system, as well as others homegrown in California, Oregon and New York.
Deeper investigation is needed to find out where SARS-CoV-2 came from, according to a letter signed by 18 scientists from various institutions in North America and Europe. Published today (May 14) in
Science, the letter notes that the available evidence about the virus’ origins doesn’t allow researchers to rule out either the hypothesis that the virus spilled over from animals, or the idea that it was accidentally released from a laboratory.
“We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data,” the authors write. “A proper investigation should be transparent, objective, data-driven, inclusive of broad expertise, subject to independent oversight, and responsibly managed to minimize the impact of conflicts of interest.”