The COVID-19 panel of scientists probing the origin of the virus has been disbanded

The chairman of a COVID-19 commission affiliated to the Lancet scientific journals, Dr. Sachs said he laid off the task force because he was concerned about links to the EcoHealth Alliance. The New York-based nonprofit is under scrutiny from some scientists, members of Congress and other officials since 2020 for using US funding for studies on bat coronaviruses in conjunction with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a research facility in the Chinese city, Where the first covid- 19 outbreak took place.

The president of the EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak, led the task force until he stepped down from that role in June. Some other members of the task force have collaborated with Dr. Daszak or the EcoHealth Alliance on projects.

“I didn’t want just one task force that was explicitly involved with one of the main issues of this whole quest, which was the EcoHealth Alliance,” said Dr. Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development. at Columbia University.

A member of the task-force said the disbanded group does not have a conflict of interest that interferes with its ability to collect data and assess how the virus got into the human population.

The disbanding of the task force is the latest development in the global scientific quest to trace the origins of the virus. The discovery has fueled geopolitical tensions and debate as to whether the virus began to spread naturally in human populations, from an animal, or after an accident related to a laboratory or other scientific research. Calls from scientists and health leaders to investigate the possibility of a laboratory accident have gained momentum in recent months.

Dr Sachs said the Lancet COVID-19 Commission will continue to study the origins for a report to be published in mid-2022, but will seek input from other experts on biosafety concerns, including government oversight and transparency about risky laboratory research. will broaden its scope to include. More laboratories have the technology to recreate or create new viruses, he said, yet regulations and standards on how to conduct these experiments safely are not being followed.

“There is a lot going on around the world that hasn’t been properly investigated or explained to the public,” he said. He said that he is not endorsing one hypothesis about the origin of Covid-19 over the other. The task force was pursuing the lead on both the natural and laboratory-leak hypothesis.

Members of the task force that disbanded Dr. Sachs in mid-September are discussing ways to continue their investigation. “We’re going to continue this important work,” said Stanley Perlman, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa and a member of the task force.

Dr. Sachs appointed Dr. Daszak to lead the task force in 2020. The 12-member group is made up of experts in emerging viruses and animal health. These include Malik Peiris, a Hong Kong virologist who was instrumental in identifying the coronavirus that caused the SARS outbreak in 2003; Carlos das Neves, director of research and internationalization at the Norwegian Veterinary Institute; and Danielle Anderson, an Australian virologist at the University of Melbourne who conducted the research at the Wuhan Institute in late 2019.

An expert in the search for emerging viruses in animals that may be a threat to humans, Dr. Daszak has been a vocal opponent of the hypothesis that the virus may have been spread by a laboratory accident. He was a member of a World Health Organization-led team that visited Wuhan earlier this year and concluded that a laboratory leak was highly unlikely.

In the signing of the papers in the Lancet in February 2020, five task-force members, Dr. Daszak, in which he denounced conspiracy theories that the new coronavirus was bioengineered and in July 2021 that more evidence supported the virus’ natural origins. Dr. Perlman, a researcher for the coronavirus for four decades, signed the letters, but said he did not conduct the research with scientists from the EcoHealth Alliance or the Wuhan Institute.

The WHO-led investigation into the origins has largely been stalled for months. A report by US intelligence agencies, submitted to President Biden in August, did not reach any definite conclusions due to a lack of data from China.

New research is providing possible clues about the origins of the virus. Researchers at the Pasteur Institute, a French non-profit, recently reported three coronaviruses found in bats in caves in northern Laos near the border with China, which resemble pandemic viruses and can infect human cells. Huh. Researchers said the findings suggest that SARS-CoV-2, a virus similar to the pandemic virus, is circulating in nature and can infect people who come into contact with these bats.

A new national COVID-19 commission is planning to join the search for the origins of the pandemic over the next few months, said Philip Jellicoe, director of the commission’s planning group and professor of history at the University of Virginia. The new commission, supported by several foundations, is setting up a task force that will include experts in emerging disease epidemics and scientists with experience and concerns about high-risk laboratory research, said Mr. Zellicoe, who was involved in 9/11. was the Executive Director. Commission.

“We are very interested in the core issue,” he said. “We all think there is likely to be some cooperation on this if it is seen as a non-governmental effort.”