The mysterious leak from the lab is certainly a possibility, but whether this was the source of the initial outbreak in China that led to the global pandemic, or whether it spread naturally from wild animals to humans remains an open question (The picture is a photo from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences).
In recent days, the United States has claimed that the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) most likely originated in a laboratory controlled by the Chinese government, reigniting the debate regarding the origin of the global pandemic that began three years ago.
Dr Robert Redfield, who served as director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2018 to 2021, told a US congressional panel on Wednesday (March 8) that he believes the new coronavirus is likely an accidental leak from a Chinese laboratory the result of.
His views are in line with previous statements made by FBI Director Christopher Wray. The latter once accepted an interview with Fox News (Fox News), an American TV station, and said: “The FBI has been evaluating the source of the global pandemic for some time, and the most likely is a potential laboratory incident.”
Many scientists have pointed out that there is no evidence that the virus escaped from the laboratory, and other U.S. government agencies have come to different conclusions.
As a result, there is no consensus on the source of the outbreak—even within the U.S. government—but how easy is it for a virus to escape from a laboratory? Has this kind of thing happened before?
fatal outbreak
Yes – deadly viruses have been unleashed from laboratories in the heart of major cities before – and none more dangerous than smallpox.
The virus is generally believed to have killed 300 million people in the 20th century alone, before being wiped out in 1977.
This explains why, in August 1978, Janet Parker, a 40-year-old medical photographer at the University of Birmingham in England, was suddenly diagnosed with such a panic.
“It was a disease that was terrified; there was panic not just in Birmingham, but within the government and at the World Health Organization (WHO) regarding its emergence,” says Prof Alasdair Geddes )explain. He was an infectious disease consultant at East Birmingham Hospital at the time of the outbreak.
Smallpox is an infectious disease that kills regarding one-third of those infected, and the university’s laboratory was conducting related experiments at the time.
How on earth did Ms. Parker get smallpox? This question has never been fully answered.
A government report said the virus must have spread in one of three ways — through drafts, human-to-human contact, or contact with contaminated equipment.
After a series of quarantine measures, the only person other than Ms. Parker who was infected at the time was her mother.
Ms Parker died and her mother recovered from a mild infection, but the outbreak claimed two other lives.
Her 77-year-old father, Frederick, died in isolation of a heart attack suspected to be caused by the stress of his daughter’s illness; , who committed suicide in the meantime.
highest security level
image source,Getty Images
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta is one of the world’s top laboratory facilities. The picture shows a photo during the visit of US President Biden.
After the incident, authorities reassessed the risk of another leak at the lab, while also taking action to reduce the number of locations where the virus is stored.
Under the 1979 WHO agreement, the only official storage places for live smallpox virus samples are the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, USA, and the Russian National Center for Virology and Biotechnology Research in the Novosibirsk region of Russia.
These have been selected as the best and safest labs in the world, but they have also seen worrying incidents.
In 2014, staff at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention failed to properly inactivate the anthrax bacteria being tested, nearly putting dozens of people at risk (none of them ended up getting sick).
In 2019, a gas explosion at the Russian National Virus and Biotechnology Research Center blew out the windows of a building, causing a staff member to be severely burned and sent to the intensive care unit. However, authorities said there was no incident of biocontamination during the incident.
fatal error
image source,Getty Images
The prion protein that causes Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease can wreak havoc on the brain – the yellow area in this scan is the infected part
In other highly fortified laboratories, there have also been incidents of infection among staff and nearby people.
In France, a scientist died 10 years following being cut by a device, prompting a nationwide tightening of security measures.
It was 2019, and 33-year-old Émilie Jaumain died following being exposed 10 years earlier to the contagious prion protein that infects livestock with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). BSE) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans.
Although aware at the time that she might have been infected, doctors had no vaccine or medical treatment for the disease.
A mistake at a biopharmaceutical factory in the northwestern Chinese city of Lanzhou infected more than 10,000 people with a dangerous pathogen.
At that time, in the factory area where the brucellosis vaccine was manufactured, someone used expired disinfectant to treat the exhaust gas.
That allowed the germs to spread to workers at a nearby research facility, and then to thousands of people in the city.
While the disease is rarely fatal, it can produce flu-like symptoms that can lead to long-term problems—the bug was developed into a biological weapon by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Thousands of people required medical treatment and were subsequently compensated.
These instances are by no means uncommon, and many other mistakes have resulted in lab infections among staff and nearby residents.
mysterious leak
WHO Special Envoy: Virus traceability rarely finds clear signposts
There have also been instances where diseases have leaked from laboratories, but the cause has never been determined.
In 2021, workers at a facility in Taipei contracted COVID-19 while researching the virus.
The investigation found that the lab’s oversight was “insufficient,” but it never identified what went wrong.
There are speculations that the cause may be the inhalation of the virus in the laboratory, or the wrong order of removing the protective equipment.
The mysterious leak from the lab is certainly a possibility, but whether this was the source of the initial outbreak in China that led to the global pandemic, or whether it spread naturally from wild animals to humans remains an open question.
