Christopher Wray, Director of the FBI, claimed on the conservative channel Fox News that the global pandemic was caused by the leak of this coronavirus from a Chinese laboratory. For Bruno Lina, virologist in Lyon and member of Covars, there is no evidence that accredits this hypothesis.
“We do not see why the FBI favors this track today”. While the mystery remains on the origins of Covid-19, responsible for the recent global pandemic, virologist Bruno Lina, member of Covars (Committee for monitoring and anticipating health risks), returned to the columns of the Parisian on the remarks of the boss of the FBI at the beginning of the week. In an interview granted to the American channel Fox News and released on Tuesday, Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, took sides with the thesis of a leak from a Chinese laboratory.
“The FBI has believed for a while that the origin of the pandemic probably lies in a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” he said, before repeating that “we are talking regarding a potential leak from ‘a laboratory under the authority of the Chinese state’.
Animal origin, “most probable hypothesis”
For Bruno Lina, this hypothesis “has no scientific basis and, to date, we have no new elements that would allow us to reopen this file”. “Unfortunately, we still don’t know where this virus came from,” continued the scientist, stressing that “the most likely hypothesis” was an animal origin, “probably” via the bat.
“Certain coronaviruses circulating in [la chauve-souris] look a lot like SARS-CoV-2, the cause of Covid-19. It would have been transmitted to humans through another farmed or wild animal, perhaps present in the market in Wuhan, China, where the first cases were identified,” explains the virologist.
In this other animal, the virus “was able to multiply” before “accumulating” and “stabilizing” “mutations which then allowed it to infect humans”.
If this hypothesis has not been proven either, it is put forward by the scientific community because several other viruses have developed in this way. Like another type of coronavirus, Sras, “where the bat contaminated a civet, for example, which ate a fruit contaminated with its urine”, causing an epidemic between 2002 and 2003, mainly in China.
Accelerate scientific cooperation
Bruno Lina does not, however, categorically reject the lead favored by the FBI, due to the presence in Wuhan of a “high security laboratory”, which “worked on coronaviruses”.
“It is impossible to be certain that there was no accidental leak. But if we weigh the two hypotheses, the most likely remains the natural origin and not the accidental origin”, affirms he.
Since the start of the pandemic, the scientific community has considered it crucial to know the origins of this scourge in order to be able to better combat it or even avoid a future pandemic. An approach made difficult by cooperation with China, which is stalling. Bruno Lina, he believes that “we have to stop going around in circles and wasting everyone’s time because cooperation with China to determine the origin of the Covid is not happening, and it does not will never happen.”
Especially since “what we experienced with the Covid can happen once more. Until we understand the transmission mechanism, it is impossible to say that we will do better next time”.
