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​​Virus escaped from the laboratory? - Expert on laboratory theory: "Only works if someone is directly infected"

Virus escaped from the laboratory?

Expert on laboratory theory: "Only works if someone is directly infected"
https://www.derbund.ch/expertin-zur-labor-theorie-geht-nur-wenn-jemand-direkt-angesteckt-wird-820452773111

A report is fueling rumors about the origin of Sars-CoV-2 again. The Swiss biosafety expert Kathrin Summermatter is skeptical, but calls for an on-site investigation.

Felix StraumannHigh safety standards: An employee of a biotech laboratory in Wuhan.

Felix Straumann

Updated: 04/16/2020, 8:53 pm

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High safety standards: An employee of a biotech laboratory in Wuhan.

Photo: Reuters

Does Sars-CoV-2 come from a laboratory in Wuhan? According to an article in the Washington Post, in 2018 US diplomats warned of deficiencies in the high-security laboratory in Wuhan, where experiments with corona viruses from bats and fruit bats were carried out. There was a lack of adequately trained staff, it said in a report to the US State Department.

Biosafety expert Kathrin Summermatter from the University of Bern is skeptical that such deficiencies have increased the risk of a coronavirus release. “There are safety-relevant aspects of every laboratory inspection that need to be improved without there being any acute danger,” she says. This affects all countries, including the USA and Switzerland. As an example, Summermatter mentions the inspection of smallpox laboratories in the USA and Russia by the World Health Organization, which were also found to have safety deficiencies in 2017. Not serious, but some that had to be fixed.


Escape is unlikely

The expert herself has inspected numerous biosafety laboratories around the world, including in China. The security level there is high today, she said in an interview two months ago . The training of the staff, criticized in the Washington Post article, is doubtful for Summermatter anyway: "In the USA, great value is placed on drill-based training and signed documents that do not necessarily have anything to do with the quality of the work." During inspections, you then work with checklists. But if such documents are not available, that does not mean that work is being done worse.

Summermatter therefore continues to consider it very unlikely that the current Sars-CoV-2 virus has escaped from a biosecurity laboratory. "With the small amounts that are worked with, that only works if someone is directly infected," she says. If, on the other hand, the pathogen were to get into the environment through a leak or contamination, that would be too little to trigger a pandemic. It is also hardly possible for an employee to become infected and spread the virus at home.

Nevertheless, Summermatter admits: "You can never rule that out 100 percent." She demands: "Independent experts should now check the laboratory, for example under the supervision of the WHO." That is the only way to be absolutely sure.

Not an artificial virus

It is clear that Sars-CoV-2 is not an artificially produced virus. In mid-March, a study in the journal “Nature Medicine” showed that the gene sequence could only have been created through natural selection. Such viruses may also develop in appropriate laboratory tests. However, the genome was not deliberately interfered with in order to construct a more aggressive pathogen, as some claim.

"In the US media, such topics are often hyped," says Summermatter. She finds it striking that such a newspaper report is being published right now. This after US President Donald Trump accused the WHO of having done poorly. "For me it all looks like a deliberately controlled publication in order to distract from his own problems," says Summermatter.

Felix Straumann is a science editor with a focus on medicine. He holds a master's degree in microbiology and spent many years in laboratories at the university hospital and in the private sector before becoming a journalist.