In a recent interview for the BBC Radio 4 podcast, Fever: The Hunt for Covid's Origin, former head of China's Centre for Disease Control (CDC), Prof George Gao, stated that the possibility of Covid-19 originating from a laboratory cannot be ruled out. While China's government has dismissed any suggestion of the virus originating from a Wuhan laboratory, Gao's comments suggest that the Chinese government may have taken the theory more seriously than its official statements suggest. Gao also stated that while he has not seen the result of a formal investigation into the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), he has heard that the laboratory was given a clean bill of health. However, the acknowledgment that some form of official investigation took place is the first of its kind.
The debate surrounding the origins of Covid-19 has been highly politicized and controversial. While many scientists believe that the virus spread naturally from bats to humans, others argue that the virus could have infected someone involved in research designed to better understand the threat of viruses emerging from nature. Some scientists, including Prof Ian Lipkin, who co-wrote the March 2020 paper, "The Proximal Origin of Sars-Cov-2," which ruled out any laboratory-based scenario, now have doubts about the strength of their earlier conclusion and suggest that laboratory or research scenarios cannot be excluded.
China's government has been pushing a third theory of its own, suggesting that the virus may have been brought into the country on frozen food packaging. However, outside of China, there is broad agreement that China has not done enough to look for evidence or share it. While it may seem like a simple question, the origins of Covid-19 are anything but, and as the world continues to grapple with the pandemic, the answer matters for those who have suffered and continue to suffer.