Who are you covid masters? – Newspaper Kommersant No. 29 (7474) dated February 16, 2023

The World Health Organization (WHO) will continue to ask China for data that will help break the deadlock in the investigation into the origin of the new coronavirus infection. A WHO spokesman made the announcement after the media reported on the “silent” suspension of the process. Vladimir Dedkov, a participant in the first and only expedition of WHO experts to Wuhan, Deputy Director for Research at the Pasteur Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, told Kommersant that the scientific work was “dramatically politicized,” which is why the Chinese side refused further cooperation.

The fact that the WHO is suspending further investigation into the origin of the coronavirus due to problems with collecting the necessary data for this was reported by the influential scientific journal Nature and The Daily Telegraph. Nature even clarified that the process was stopped “quietly.” WHO spokesman Tarik Yasharevich promptly denied the media reports, calling them “inaccurate”. He stated that the organization is in favor of continuing to study the nature of SARS-CoV-2 and continues to ask China for information, without which it is impossible to move forward. Mr. Jaszarevic recalled that the establishment of the Scientific Advisory Group of Experts on Emerging Dangerous Pathogens (SAGO) at WHO in 2021 “is the best attempt to get things off the ground.”

However, Vladimir Dedkov, Deputy Director for Research at the Pasteur Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, believes that the media have only made public what everyone already knows: over the past two years, no studies have been conducted on the origin of COVID-19.

Mr. Dedkov was among ten international WHO experts who went to Wuhan in January 2021 (where the first outbreak of the disease was recorded) to analyze the data collected by Chinese scientists. “In our report on the first phase of the investigation, we warned that politicization would slow down the scientific process. In fact, that’s what happened. The WHO continued to demand proof from China that they did not make the virus, demand more detailed access to their facilities, but China, of course, did not want this, and nothing happened. And as long as this is the case, it will not happen,” Vladimir Dedkov believes.

Recall that scientists then developed four hypotheses of the possible origin of the coronavirus. According to experts, it is “likely” or “very likely” that the transmission occurred from bats to humans through another animal. In this case, infection directly through bats is assessed as simply “probable”. It is also possible, but with a low probability, the scenario of infection through food.

Scientists noted that the closest relative of the coronavirus that caused the pandemic was found in bats, but the “evolutionary distance” between these bat viruses and SARS-CoV-2 is estimated at several decades, so an intermediate link is assumed. The report indicates that very similar viruses have been found in pangolins, but minks and cats are also susceptible to this infection, so they could also be carriers.

There is nothing extraordinary in the fact that experts have not yet found the “guilty” animal, no, comments Vladimir Dedkov. “The first outbreak of Marburg fever, caused by the virus of the same name, was recorded in 1976. Periodically, they occur, for example, the last one was in the Congo, but we still do not know where the reservoir of this virus is in nature. We also assume that this is a bat, but no one can say for sure,” continues Mr. Dedkov. He also recalls that scientists have been searching for the carrier of the first SARS (SARS virus outbreak in 2003) for 12 years: “But there was no politicization of the process, and everything happened in the usual scientific search mode, which ended successfully.”

Scientists have noted the version of the laboratory origin of COVID-19 as the least likely. Vladimir Dedkov recalls that experts examined the laboratory in Wuhan: its design, the level of safety during work showed that the leak was extremely doubtful. They also looked at staff survey data (no one had antibodies to the virus) and the genetic sequences of those isolates (swabs taken from a sick person) that were obtained from the local market. “It turned out that the virus was heterogeneous on the market, which means that for some time it circulated somewhere. We are not at all sure that it all started there, – says Mr. Dedkov. – But it should be noted that we, as scientists, proceeded from the reliability of the facts provided to us. An artificial virus and a real one cannot be distinguished from each other. How can you not distinguish between two children, one of which was born as a result of IVF, and the other – naturally, if you do not know the history of their conception. The analogy is wrong, but understandable.

China and the United States have repeatedly accused each other of creating the coronavirus.

In early 2020, members of the administration of then US President Donald Trump made unsubstantiated claims that he appeared in a Wuhan laboratory.

Chinese officials, in turn, expressed doubts that COVID-19 originated in their country. In the summer of 2022, Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov, head of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Forces, said that, having studied the documents obtained during a special operation in Ukraine, the Ministry of Defense came to the conclusion that the coronavirus pandemic was caused artificially. “We are considering the possibility that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is involved in the emergence of a new coronavirus. Since 2009, this agency has funded the Predict program, in which new types of coronaviruses have been studied,” said Mr. Kirillov.

Science knows attempts to create coronavirus artificially. So, in 2015, Nature published an article by American and Chinese scientists from the laboratory of special pathogens and biosafety of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. They described experiments with a virus isolated from a bat and the 2002-2003 SARS virus. Analyzing what certain sections of the RNA of the virus are responsible for, the authors found a way to make such a coronavirus simultaneously capable of infecting laboratory mice and human cells (as well as one of the monkeys). The article is now accompanied by a note that it is “used as the basis for untested theories that COVID-19 was artificially created.” In October 2022, US authorities launched an investigation into the activities of scientists at Boston University who were researching various strains of COVID-19. The reason was media reports that the laboratory had created “an artificial version of COVID-19 with a mortality rate of 80%”. The researchers themselves denied this information.

Vladimir Dedkov clarifies that, having settled on the wording “most unlikely” regarding a laboratory leak, the scientists had in mind that if new data appeared in the process that would give this hypothesis a large statistical weight, it would rise higher: “We coordinated this wording with the Chinese side, and they agreed to this, although they could immediately refuse. But the result was a report by the WHO Secretary General who said that there is not enough data from China and more checks on the leaked version should be carried out. ” Then the second phase was to follow: the creation of a scientific program aimed at searching for a virus in nature and epidemiological studies of the population. But due to the fact that the issue was “dramatically politicized”, the Chinese side, according to Mr. Dedkov, refused further cooperation. The study of the origin of the new coronavirus infection, in his opinion, will continue, as this is an important scientific task. But this study will probably not take place under the auspices of the WHO.

Natalia Kostarnova