Danielle Anderson was working in what has become the world’s most notorious laboratory just weeks before the first known cases of Covid-19 emerged in China. Now the Australian virologist has shared her story for the first time. An expert in bat-borne viruses, Anderson is the only foreign scientist to have undertaken research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s BSL-4 (Biosafety Level 4) lab, the first in mainland China equipped to handle the planet’s deadliest pathogens. Her most recent stint ended in November 2019, giving Anderson an insider’s perspective on a place that has become a flashpoint in the search for what caused the worst pandemic in a century. Lab leak or nature? Debate heats up on the origins of Covid-19 virus The emergence of the coronavirus in the same city where scientists, clad head-to-toe in protective gear, study that exact family of viruses has stoked speculation that it might have leaked from the lab, possibly via an infected employee or a contaminated object. China’s lack of transparency has fuelled those suspicions, turning the quest to uncover the origins of the virus, critical for preventing future pandemics, into a geopolitical minefield. The work of the lab and the director of its emerging infectious diseases section – Shi Zhengli, a long-time colleague of Anderson’s dubbed “bat woman” for her work hunting viruses in caves – is now shrouded in controversy. The US has questioned the lab’s safety and has alleged its scientists were engaged in contentious “gain of function” research, where they study how viruses can be modified to become deadlier or more transmissible. But in an interview with Bloomberg News Anderson said half-truths and distorted information have obscured what the lab was doing. “It was a regular lab that worked in the same way as any other high-containment lab,” she said. “What people are saying is just not how it is.” Now at Melbourne’s Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, Anderson has worked around the world. She began collaborating with Wuhan researchers in 2016, as scientific director of the biosafety lab at Singapore’s Duke-NUS Medical School. Her research, focusing on why lethal viruses like Ebola cause no disease in the bats in which they perpetually circulate, complemented studies under way at the Chinese institute, which offered funding to encourage international collaboration. Anderson, 42, whose favourite film is 1995’s Outbreak , in which experts respond to a dangerous new virus, said her work in Wuhan on Ebola was the realisation of a lifelong career goal. Anderson visited the 65-year-old research centre in Wuhan daily for a period in late 2019, part of a group that gathered at the Chinese Academy of Sciences to board a bus to the institute about 20 miles away. Anderson was the only foreigner and said her colleagues looked out for her. They ate meals together and saw one another outside work. Covid-19 origin search abandons lab leak theory, China’s leader in joint WHO mission says Anderson was impressed with the institute’s bio-containment lab which requires air, water and waste to be filtered and sterilised before it leaves the facility. There were strict protocols and requirements to contain the pathogens being studied, she said, and researchers had 45 hours of training to be certified to work independently in the lab. Scientists had to demonstrate their knowledge of containment procedures and their competency in wearing air-pressured suits. “It is very, very extensive,” Anderson said. Such rules are mandatory across BSL-4 labs. However, the Trump administration’s focus on the idea the virus escaped from the Wuhan facility suggested something went seriously wrong. Experts initially dismissed that, saying viruses often jump from animals to humans. But China’s actions, including refusing then delaying access to international scientists and World Health Organization experts, raised questions. The WHO team’s final report, written with and vetted by Chinese researchers, said the virus probably spread via a bat through another animal. Sars, an earlier coronavirus that emerged in 2002 and killed more than 700 people, subsequently made its way out of secure facilities a few times, she said. If presented with evidence that such an accident spawned the current pandemic, Anderson said she was “not naive enough to say I absolutely write this off.” But she still believes it probably came from a natural source. It took researchers almost a decade to pin down details of where in nature Sars emerged so Anderson is not surprised they have not found the Covid-19 “smoking gun” bat. She is convinced no virus was made intentionally to infect people and deliberately released. Anderson conceded that it would be theoretically possible for a scientist in the lab to be working on a ‘gain of function’ technique to unknowingly infect themselves and to then unintentionally infect others in the community. But there’s no evidence that occurred and Anderson rated the likelihood as very slim. Getting authorisation to create a virus in this way typically requires many layers of approval, and there are scientific best practices that strictly limit such work. Even if such a gain of function effort got clearance, it is extremely hard to achieve, Anderson said. Her Singapore lab was one of the first to isolate Sars-CoV-2 – the virus that causes Covid-19 – from a patient outside China and then grow it, a challenging process even for a team used to working with coronaviruses. US claims of China coronavirus lab leak an ‘attempt to distract’ from Trump’s own mistakes: Germany Anderson believes an investigation is needed to nail down the pandemic’s origin once and for all. She is dumbfounded by the portrayal of the lab by some media outside China, and the toxic attacks on scientists. One of a dozen experts appointed to an international task force to study the origins of Covid-19, Anderson has not sought public attention, especially since being targeted by US extremists last year after she exposed false information about the pandemic posted online. The vitriol that ensued prompted her to file a police report. The elements known to trigger infectious outbreaks – the mixing of humans and animals, especially wildlife – were present in Wuhan. In that respect, the emergence of Covid-19 follows a familiar pattern. What is shocking to Anderson is the way it unfurled into a global contagion. “The pandemic is something no one could have imagined on this scale. The virus was in the right place at the right time and everything lined up to cause this disaster.”