As the world fights the deadly coronavirus pandemic, no one can really shake off the feeling of how it all started in an unheard city of Wuhan in China. From being an isolated issue, the numbers swiftly multiplied in China and in a matter of days, the world was faced with the worst crisis since the last world war. Thousands of lives are lost and millions more affected by novel coronavirus - but there's no vaccine or cure in sight.
China, which was once the epicenter of the viral pathogen, managed to flatten the curve. Initially, it was believed that the virus only spread from animals to humans, but after some cases showed no connection with animals, it was established that COVID-19 was transmissible from person to person. But it was too late by then and the virus was well on its way to becoming a pandemic. Many even criticized China for releasing facts of the disease little too late.
Coronavirus' impact on the world hasn't been horrific. In fact, the US has turned in to the worst-hit country by the virus with over 1 million confirmed cases out of 3+ million cases in the world. The country has also reported the highest number of deaths, which is reaching close to 62,000.
China behind coronavirus outbreak?
Since the situation worsened in the US, and in other parts of the world, there have been conspiracies about China being behind it all and that COVID-19 is a man-made bioweapon. A lot of reports claimed that the novel coronavirus might have been accidentally released from an infectious lab in Wuhan. In fact, US Director of National Intelligence is trying hard to find out if there's a link between the coronavirus outbreak and Wuhan lab. But a report by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency has found "no credible evidence to indicate SARS-CoV-2 was released intentionally or was created as a biological weapon," Newsweek reported.
Of many theories, one that likely stuck was that the SARS-CoV-2 originated from the wild. As pointed out in the Newsweek report, the Wuhan Institute of Virology has the world's largest collection of coronaviruses from wild bats and at least one strain resembled to COVID-19. The lab is also located closer to animal markets in Wuhan and the primary objective of the lab was to enhance certain properties of viruses to predict future pandemics and be prepared for it.
US funding for Wuhan lab
The research, as scary as it sounds, was intended to help prepare for a pandemic, better yet prevent it, and was not kept a secret. The 2002's SARS was the reason why countries, including China and US, pooled in funds to identify strange strains of pathogens and how they pose a threat to humankind. In fact, the Wuhan lab had received $200 million in funding from international program called PREDICT, which was funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and other countries, Newsweek reported.
The report further added that the U.S. National Institutes of Health had partly funded similar researches that had been carried out in dozens of labs around the world.
But there's no evidence to support the fact that COVID-19 indeed originated from a Wuhan lab or that it was a man-made bioweapon.
