COVID-19 originsAnimal Origin or Lab-Leak Theory? What Sparked the COVID-19 Pandemic

Published 27 August 2021

“We can’t rule out the possibility of a lab accident. It can’t be dismissed entirely, but there’s no evidence for it right now. The weight of evidence that we do have points to this pandemic emerging from markets in Wuhan that sold wildlife, probably illegally,” says University of Utah’s Stephen Goldsgtein. To support the lab-leak theory, “the key piece of evidence that we would want to see is that there is evidence that this virus was present in a lab before the pandemic. Right now, there’s no evidence that this virus was known to humanity before it was first identified in patient samples in Wuhan in December 2019.”

Ongoing debate about the origin of the pandemic continues. Did SARS CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, originate in wild animals that then infected humans? Or did it leak from a lab? Twenty one scientific experts, including University of Utah scientist Stephen Goldstein, Ph.D., published a critical review in the journal Cell, laying out the evidence supporting an animal origin. Goldstein discusses with Julie Kiefer of the University of Utah Health what we do and do not know, along with steps that need be taken to prevent another pandemic from emerging in the future.

Julie Kiefer: This paper provides evidence that it is unlikely that the pandemic was caused by a lab accident that released the virus into the human population. Why did this group feel it was important to write this review?
Stephen Goldstein
: Looking at how this conversation has progressed over time, it seemed to us that in the public eye there was momentum building toward arguing that this virus came out of a lab without any new evidence having emerged in support of that. In fact, additional evidence has emerged in support of the idea that this virus came out of animals. We felt like the public discussion was out of balance, and, at least in the last year or so, this topic hadn’t received a critical scientific review. It was time to put something like that out there.

Kiefer: What are the main takeaways from this work?
Goldstein
: The early cases of the origin of the epidemic in Wuhan, China, clearly seemed to be centered in this district of Wuhan surrounding a market called the Huanan Seafood Market. When they were in Wuhan, the WHO investigations team was told that there were no live mammals sold at that market. But in June, a really important paper was published from Chinese and Canadian wildlife researchers showing, in fact, that through November 2019, when we believe this virus first entered the human population, many animals known to be susceptible to SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19, were in fact sold at this market and other markets. Those are two important pieces of evidence that we put together here.