Where did COVID come from? The case for a leak of a virus engineered in a Wuhan lab

A year ago I wrote in these pages that the most plausible cause of the pandemic was an accidental leak of a coronavirus from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. I have changed my view. I now think it’s likely that the cause of the pandemic is an accidental leak of an engineered coronavirus from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Many had been sceptical about the lab leak theory, not least because Donald Trump had been suggesting it. On Wednesday, United States President Joe Biden asked American agencies to investigate this theory more closely. His move follows a shift among virologists, including former sceptics, who are increasingly coming to the view that a lab leak is most likely.

A security guard moves journalists away from the Wuhan Institute of Virology as the WHO team arrives for a field visit in February. Credit: AP

The arguments are reviewed in a recent evaluation of the evidence by a former editor of Nature and Science, Nicholas Wade, and republished in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

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