Explainer | Why is the US investigating the origins of the coronavirus?

The Biden administration is expected to announce the results of an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic
The move grew out of frustration over restrictions placed on a probe conducted by Chinese and international scientists, organised by the WHO

Coronavirus pandemic

Robert Delaney

Published: 5:57am, 24 Aug 2021

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US President Joe Biden’s administration is expected to announce the results of a three-month investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic as soon as this week, potentially aggravating US-China friction as health authorities globally struggle to subdue the ever-evolving contagion.

Why was the investigation ordered?

The move grew out of frustration over restrictions placed on a probe conducted by Chinese and international scientists, organised by the World Health Organization (WHO), which resulted in a report in March that said it was extremely unlikely that the virus came from a lab – a theory linked to the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s study of coronaviruses. The report failed to present any solid conclusions about the contagion’s origins other than an assessment that it most likely spread to people via an intermediary animal.

A handful of nations at the time – including the United States, Britain and Japan – said the findings were flawed by a lack of independence from the Chinese government and access to all data related to early Covid-19 cases in China.

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WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said shortly before the report’s release that further investigation of a possible lab leak was needed, and that he was ready to deploy more specialists to study that theory.

Addressing the World Health Assembly weeks later, US Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra called for a phase two of the WHO investigative team’s work, one that would “give international experts the independence to fully assess the source of the virus and the early days of the outbreak”.

Biden ordered the US investigation shortly after Beijing said Washington’s calls for further investigation in China amounted to “political manipulation”. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian reiterated his suggestion that a biomedical research laboratory at the Fort Detrick military base in Maryland be investigated.

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Since the order, the lead scientist in the WHO team that went to China this year has given more credence to the lab leak theory.

Peter Ben Embarek, a programme manager at the WHO specialising in food safety and animal-to-human infectious diseases, told Danish broadcaster TV2 in an interview aired earlier this month that transmission from bats to humans could be considered in the context of four scenarios included in the joint WHO-China report. The scenarios were direct animal-to-human spillover; original host to human via an intermediary; introduction through frozen products; and lab leak.

In the WHO report published in March, the possibility of researchers being infected in the field was not mentioned.

What is the focus of the US investigation?

Biden said when he ordered the new investigation that the US intelligence community had “coalesced around two likely scenarios”: SARS-CoV-2 emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident.

Highlighting an earlier finding by US officials that “the majority of elements [in the US intelligence community] do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other”, Biden “asked the intelligence community to redouble their efforts to collect and analyse information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion”.

Absent cooperation by China, the US investigation would need to rely on analysis of early cases exported from China and to scour genetic sequences posted by the Wuhan Institute of Virology on open source platforms for the presence of Sars-CoV-2.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki at the White House in Washington on Monday. Photo: EPA-EFE

When will the report be released?

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Monday that Tuesday marks the 90-day deadline for the investigation and that “it typically takes a couple of days if not longer to put together an unclassified version to present publicly and obviously the president would be briefed first”.

“I would expect it will be several days a couple to several days after tomorrow,” Psaki added.

She declined to say what format would be used to release the investigation’s findings.

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