- Peter Daszak, one of the scientists on the WHO panel, urged people not to ‘rely too much on US intelligence’
- Report came after WHO experts rubbished theory touted by the US that Covid could have leaked from a Wuhan lab
- Dr Embarek, who led the probe, said theory is ‘extremely unlikely’ and should not be studied any further
- But he called for further studies into whether virus was imported into China, possibly on frozen foods
- Findings will be a PR coup for Beijing, which has repeatedly pointed finger of blame for pandemic overseas
- It will also provide ammunition to WHO’s critics, who feared mission would become part of Chinese white-washing exercise with potentially embarrassing or incriminating evidence hidden from researchers
By Tim Stickings and Chris Pleasance for MailOnline, 10 February 2021
A scientist on the WHO’s controversial fact-finding mission to Wuhan has today launched an extraordinary attack on US intelligence after a spokesman suggested that China had lied to his investigation.
Peter Daszak, a British-American expert in pandemics, warned people ‘don’t rely too much on US intel’ saying it was ‘increasingly disengaged under Trump and frankly wrong on many aspects’ about Covid.
He was responding to State Department spokesman Ned Price who had said ‘the jury’s still out’ when asked whether China cooperated fully with the WHO probe, which concluded that Covid did not leak from a Wuhan lab – as US officials have said – while backing theories from Beijing that it could have been imported on frozen meats.
But Daszak’s own credibility is in question after it emerged that the organisation he heads, the EcoHealth Alliance, has for a decade funnelled money into the lab at the centre of leak theories – the Wuhan Institute of Virology – and its chief researcher Dr Shi Zhengli, also known as China’s batwoman.
Daszak has been involved in efforts to downplay theories that the virus leaked from the laboratory as far back as February last year, and has published several articles in The Guardian arguing that such theories are bogus.
That is despite warning himself just a few years earlier of the risk of highly infectious diseases escaping from laboratories, and that the origins of Covid are still unknown – a fact the WHO investigation openly acknowledges.
Peter Daszak lashed out at the US today and suggested its intelligence on China is ‘unreliable’ after a White House security adviser said it is unclear whether Beijing fully cooperated with the WHO’s Covid probe, which Daszak took part in+19
Who is on the WHO team investigating the origins of the coronavirus?
The WHO unveiled a 10-strong panel in November tasked with investigating the origins of the coronavirus, including with this month’s visit to China.
They are:
Thea Fischer, Denmark – Virologist and epidemiologist at University of Copenhagen and Nordsjaelland Hospital, previously worked at Denmark’s State Serum Institute. Expert in epidemic control and vaccinology
John Watson, UK – UK’s deputy chief medical officer from 2013 to 2017, after helping lead response to the 2009 swine flu pandemic. Also an honorary professor of epidemiology at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Marion Koopmans, Netherlands – Dutch virologist who is head of the Erasmus Medical Centre department of viroscience in Rotterdam. Has written about spread of Covid-19 between humans and mink in Denmark
Dominic Dwyer, Australia – Australian microbiologist at Westmead Clinical School in Sydney who helped grow the virus for research last February. Wants to investigate role of laboratories in the coronavirus outbreak
Vladimir Dedkov, Russia – Epidemiologist and deputy director of research at the Institute Pasteur in Russia. Helped to diagnose Ebola patients during 2014 outbreak
Hung Nguyen, Vietnam – Vietnamese biologist based at Kenya’s International Livestock Research Institute who specialises in food safety risks in wet markets. Says the team will interview people from Wuhan food market
Fabian Leendertz, Germany – Microbiologist at Germany’s Robert Koch Institute who researches how viruses jump between animals and humans. Led researchers who tracked 2014 Ebola outbreak to a bat-filled tree in Guinea
Peter Daszak, UK/US – British zoologist who is president of the US-based EcoHealth Alliance and has come under fire over links to the Wuhan virology lab and China’s so-called ‘bat woman’ virologist Shi Zhengli
Farag El Moubasher, Qatar – Epidemiologist at Qatar’s ministry of public health who researches emerging diseases. Wrote a thesis on Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), a coronavirus which emerged from camels in 2012 and killed 858 people
Ken Maeda, Japan – Director of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Japan. Has publications to his name about animal diseases and bat coronaviruses Advertisement
Peter Embarek, leader of the WHO team, said that ‘further research’ into the imported meat theory is needed, along with studies looking at early cases of Covid reported outside of China.
At the same time, he dismissed theories that the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, saying the possibility is ‘extremely unlikely’ and does not need to be investigated further – despite US government officials calling it ‘the most credible’ theory just a few weeks ago.
The findings, which mark the end of the WHO’s mission to Wuhan, amount to an almost full backing of Beijing’s explanations for the source of the pandemic and will be a PR coup for the ruling communist party, which has repeatedly tried to pin the blame outside its borders.
It will also give ammunition to WHO’s critics, who feared the investigation would be used to give legitimacy to a Chinese white-washing exercise with possibly embarrassing or incriminating evidence hidden from investigators.
It is hardly the first time that the WHO has come under fire for uncritically parroting information from Beijing – ex-President Trump made the same allegations last year before pulling US funding, a move that President Biden has now pledged to reverse.
Dr Tedros, the WHO chief, has also come in for heavy criticism for his praise of China – describing its ‘commitment to transparency’ as ‘beyond words’ during the early stages of the outbreak, despite strong doubts about data coming from Beijing and a past history of covering up disease outbreaks.
It was also revealed that Dr Tedros received support from Beijing while in the running to become WHO chief, and that China has often donated large sums of money to governments or organisations that he has been a part of.
During his press conference, Dr Embarek also backed assertions from Beijing that there is no evidence of transmission ‘in Wuhan or elsewhere’ in China before December 2019 – despite multiple studies suggesting the virus was circulating globally months earlier than that.
Outlining the findings of his team’s month-long fact-finding mission, Dr Embarek said the team had failed to establish where the virus came from or how it first jumped into humans. Instead, he said the team had come up with four theories about its origins.
He said the most likely explanation is that the virus passed from its original host animal into an intermediary animal that comes into close contact with humans, before making the leap into people.
Intermediary animals could include frozen or chilled animal products sold at markets in Wuhan, including those imported from overseas, he said, outlining his second theory.
Did coronavirus originate in Chinese government laboratory?
The Wuhan Institute of Virology has been collecting numerous coronaviruses from bats ever since the SARS outbreak in 2002.
They have also published papers describing how these bat viruses have interacted with human cells.
US Embassy staff visited the lab in 2018 and ‘had grave safety concerns’ over the protocols which were being observed at the facility.
The lab is just eight miles from the Huanan wet market which is where the first cluster of infections erupted in Wuhan.
The market is just a few hundred yards from another lab called the Wuhan Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (WHCDC).
The WHCDC kept disease-ridden animals in its labs, including some 605 bats.
Those who support the theory argue that Covid-19 could have leaked from either or both of these facilities and spread to the wet market.
Most argue that this would have been a virus they were studying rather than one which was engineered.
Last year a bombshell paper from the Beijing-sponsored South China University of Technology recounted how bats once attacked a researcher at the WHCDC and ‘blood of bat was on his skin.’
The report says: ‘Genome sequences from patients were 96% or 89% identical to the Bat CoV ZC45 coronavirus originally found in Rhinolophus affinis (intermediate horseshoe bat).’
It describes how the only native bats are found around 600 miles away from the Wuhan seafood market and that the probability of bats flying from Yunnan and Zhejiang provinces was minimal.
In addition there is little to suggest the local populace eat the bats as evidenced by testimonies of 31 residents and 28 visitors.
Instead the authors point to research being carried out within 300 yards at the WHCDC.
One of the researchers at the WHCDC described quarantining himself for two weeks after a bat’s blood got on his skin, according to the report. That same man also quarantined himself after a bat urinated on him.
And he also mentions discovering a live tick from a bat – parasites known for their ability to pass infections through a host animal’s blood.
‘The WHCDC was also adjacent to the Union Hospital (Figure 1, bottom) where the first group of doctors were infected during this epidemic.’ The report says.
‘It is plausible that the virus leaked around and some of them contaminated the initial patients in this epidemic, though solid proofs are needed in future study.’ Advertisement
The next most-likely theory is that the virus jumped directly from its original host into humans, Dr Embarek said, putting forward bats as a likely source.
But, he said, humans and bats do not come into close contact in Wuhan and swabs of bats and various other animal species in China – including wild animals, pets, and farm animals – has failed to find the original source.
Dr Embarek called for more research to be carried out into all three of these theories, and said teams should be looking outside as well as inside of China’s borders.
The only theory he rejected out-of-hand was that the virus had leaked from a lab, saying such an event was ‘extremely unlikely’.
Dr Liang Wannian, the head of China’s Wuhan research team, further agreed – claiming that there is no evidence that Covid was present at any facility in China before appearing in humans.
If the virus was not present in a lab before the outbreak then it could not have escaped, he said.
Dr Wannian instead pushed the theory – which has become prevalent in China in recent weeks – that frozen food could have been the source, saying his research shows Covid can survive for a long time at low temperatures.
This means that the virus could have travelled long distances to reach Wuhan, he added, without specifically saying that it came from overseas.
He further revealed that Huanan Seafood Market – the market where the first cluster of Covid cases was detected – was not the only market in the city to be hit by the infection.
‘While some of the early cases had close association with Huanan Seafood Market, others were associated with other markets,’ he said, ‘and other cases have no market association at all.
‘It is likely that Huanan Market acted as focus for virus transmission, but the virus was also transmitted elsewhere at the same time. It is not possible on basis of current information to establish how the virus was introduced into Hunan market.’
In fact, he claimed, the earliest confirmed case of Covid in Wuhan – which occurred on December 8 – had no connection to any market within the city.
He added that samples taken from early cases at Huanan market showed slight variations in the virus, implying that it had been present in humans for an unknown length of time before causing those infections.
Dr Embarek agreed, saying that the market played a role in the early spread but that it has not be possible to establish how the virus got into the market or how it spread through it.
Putting forward other explanations for how the virus crossed into humans, Dr Wannian suggested that cats could have acted as an intermediary animal after cases were reported in felines around the world.
He also pointed to Covid infections in mink as evidence of another host animal, rather than bats or pangolins – both animals which are commonly used in traditional Chinese medicine and cooking.
He added that tens of thousands of PCR tests have been conducted on animals around China since the initial outbreak, including on domestically farmed animals, wild animals, and pets. All of the tests were negative, he said.
Marion Koopmans, another WHO scientist who was part of the team in China, further suggested that a rabbit, a bamboo rat or a ferret badger could have acted as the intermediary because all are susceptible to coronaviruses and some were present at the Huanan market in Wuhan.