Medical Xpress January 19, 2025
Whether COVID-19 was unleashed by a laboratory mishap or spilled over from animals remains an enduring, fiercely contested mystery.
Here are the leading arguments that fuel both sides of this debate, as AFP reflects on the virus’s impact five years after it reshaped the world.
The case for lab leak
Proponents of the lab-leak hypothesis highlight that the earliest known COVID-19 cases emerged in Wuhan, China—home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), a major hub for coronavirus research—located roughly 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) from the nearest bat populations carrying similar SARS-like viruses.
“Wuhan labs performed research that placed them on a trajectory to obtain SARS viruses having high pandemic potential,” Richard Ebright, a microbiologist and professor at Rutgers University,...
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