Geopolitical tensions frustrate efforts to get to the bottom of the origin of COVID-19.
Why it’s important: Ideas about how COVID-19 started can help us prevent future pandemics, especially if it was any type of leak or accident in a virology lab.
Driving the news: The findings of a WHO-led mission in Wuhan, China earlier this year to investigate the origins of COVID-19 are expected in mid-March, health agency officials said at a rally. release on Friday, after an interim report was planned. seemingly scrapped.
Context: The WHO team received international criticism when its members concluded at a press conference at the end of the trip that a laboratory accident was “extremely unlikely” while remaining open to the possibility, promoted by Beijing, that the virus originated elsewhere and had been introduced to China using contaminated frozen foods.
Be smart: The most likely explanation remains the simplest: the coronavirus jumped from an animal host in China to humans, the type of zoonotic spill seen in countless other emerging outbreaks.
- But a pandemic threat from lab leaks is real, and as our ability to manipulate viruses grows, so will this danger.
- Although our ability to prevent zoonotic outbreaks is limited, we can and must be able to do much more to control and regulate the type of research that could lead to the accidental introduction of a new virus.
The summary: Without much better transparency, it is unlikely that we will ever know for sure how COVID-19 began and what steps we need to take to prevent it from happening again.