In February 2017, Yuan Zhiming, a tall Chinese scientist in his 50s, showed Bernard Cazeneuve (then the French prime minister) around Wuhan's high-security pathogen laboratory.
It was built with French engineering and was China's first lab with P4 technology. This is one of many dozen laboratories worldwide with this highest security classification. Yuan, who was the lab's director, had spent more than a decade working to make it possible.
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Yuan and his colleagues from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, (WIV), hoped to prevent another disaster like the 2003 SARS outbreak that embarrassed Beijing and led to the dismissal of Beijing's health minister.
China was infected with a much more deadly disease just two years after the ribbon cutting of the P4 laboratory. Yuan's team had not prevented it. Worse, some suspect they may have been involved in its creation.
Yuan strongly denied that the WIV was involved in the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. Yuan stated at a July news conference that "The Wuhan P4 laboratory has not seen any laboratory leaks, or human infections since its inception in 2018".
The WIV is now looking inward amid all the scrutiny. Yuan stated at the news conference, that his team had taken a virus database offline due to "the large number malicious attacks" and that they are being under tremendous pressure from rumors.
U.S. intelligence agencies said in a report last month that the virus was not a biological weapon, and that it's unclear whether it originated naturally or from a laboratory-associated incident. China's cooperation was required to confirm the report, which Beijing renounced in July.
Yuan and his team feel it as a cloud of suspicion. It's disappointing after their high hopes.
"Scientific collaboration on virology has ended," stated a foreign researcher who worked for many years with the WIV, but spoke anonymously because of the hostile political climate. "Now, the Chinese won't welcome foreigners because they believe you're coming in for dirt."
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Interviews with scientists, laboratory audit reports, satellite imagery, and other documentation have been used to create this account of the WIV’s 65-year history, coronavirus research, and P4 lab. The WIV declined to comment.
The P4 laboratory is located near an eight-lane road in Wuhan’s southern industrial outskirts. Here factories give way to low mountains or farmland. According to an environmental safety audit report, June 2018, the lab facilities are approximately two football fields in size. The land is twelve times larger.
Trees soften the harsh gray lines of the building. From 2005 to 2015 when it was still under construction, scientists drove out on Arbor Day to add more trees to the perimeter.
The building is based on the French P4 laboratory in Lyon and has four floors. There are waste management on the bottom, animal rooms and experimental labs on the main floor, and apparatuses to ensure safe and efficient airflow on the top two floors.
It was called state-of the-art by visitors, as opposed to older WIV buildings that were older and where scientists had to wear coats indoors in winter due to limited heating.
Boris Klempa (a researcher at the Slovak Academy of Sciences) recalled that the lab featured "the newest technology," which was a large complex. He visited it in 2017.
Some of the information they kept was not intended for the public. Song Donglin, deputy director of the P4 laboratory, was asked by the Guangzhou Daily reporter in 2018 about the virus types they had. He replied that it was important to control the disclosure of such information.
WIV management reminds staffers about state secrets requirements over the years and warns them to be cautious of foreign spies.
Jean-Pierre de Cavel is a French safety trainer at the WIV. He stated that the Chinese researchers wanted to use the lab to study infectious diseases such as Ebola and Crimean-Congo hemorhagic fever.
He said that his clients expected a powerful tool and a P4 like other large countries. They wanted the best.
However, the new P4 lab wasn't being used to research coronaviruses which are classified at lower levels of security.
Ole Skovmand, a Danish researcher, met an aggressive Chinese scientist in his 20s at a Barcelona scientific conference in 1986. Yuan Zhiming was a Chinese scientist who was researching how to kill malaria-carrying insects with Bacillus.
Skovmand (73), recalls that Yuan’s research was not cutting-edge at the time. It impressed Skovmand enough to allow Yuan to get scholarships in France, Denmark and other countries. Yuan worked as a chef in a Chinese restaurant in Denmark and also played ping-pong alongside Skovmand's son.
Christina Nielsen-LeRoux (research director at France's National Institute for Agricultural Research), who first met Yuan in Europe 20 years ago, remembers that Yuan was outgoing, gregarious, and a great friend. Nielsen-LeRoux stated that Yuan would later recall his European experiences and sometimes gripe about having to give up his research in order to concentrate on the construction of the P4 lab.
He said that he misses the time they spent together. She said it was "one of the most important things in my life."
After a turbulent start, the WIV was finally able to take off.
The WIV was founded in 1956 as a Chinese Academy of Sciences branch. Its initial work focused on pests in agriculture, a major concern during the 1959 famine. According to official figures, 229 CAS scientists were killed during the Cultural Revolution 1966-76.
Beijing authorized the WIV to create the nation's first virus archive, with 400 viruses collected over a decade after Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader, officially welcomed scientific research in 1978. The WIV was instrumental in setting up China's first automated pesticide factory in 1985.
With the 2003 SARS epidemic, WIV had higher goals. According to sources familiar with the matter, Chen Zhu was the top CAS official for biological sciences, and will soon be China's health secretary. He asked WIV to create a P4 laboratory.
Yuan went with Chen to France to convince French experts to accept the construction. To seal the deal, President Hu Jintao flew from China to Paris in January 2004.
Gabriel Gras, a French biosecurity specialist who assisted in the construction of the lab, stated that Yuan Zhiming wanted it. It's his dream project.
The WIV was able to get Beijing's support for its P4 lab but it had difficulties with bureaucracy. According to a 2006 article in China Youth Daily, Hu Zhihong, director of the WIV, had so much trouble getting access to official research on the new virus when SARS began to take hold that he "took" a sample from the morgue.
Another pivotal figure in the WIV story was revealed around this time. Shi Zhengli was Yuan's coworker and began to search bat caves in search of the source of SARS.
Shi was one year older than Yuan, and had also studied in France to specialize in aquatic viruses. She now turned her attention to bats in collaboration with Linfa Wang, a well-known Singaporean virologist. Her team collected samples from 408 bats in China in 2004.
It was hard work. Shi and her colleagues crawled through narrow caves on their stomachs. She recounted this in a June 2018 speech. They caught bats using nets and released most of them after taking samples. Sometimes, they took a few bats back with them to the laboratory.
After seven years of searching, Shi found a relative to SARS in a cave located in the subtropical Yunnan region in 2011. Her paper published by her team in 2013 brought her national fame and earned her the nickname "Bat Woman."
Shi, 50 years old, was awarded a $58million national grant in 2014 to study coronaviruses from China's south. Her team revealed that they had discovered all the genetic elements of the SARS virus virus in bats from Yunnan caves three years later - effectively proving the disease’s origin.
Yuan's 13-year-old effort was finally paying off, with the greenlight for P4 lab operation in 2017. This $42 million lab wasn't meant for daily experiments. Shi, the deputy-director of WIV, was one of only a few scientists who had been trained to use the lab.
Shi was in the international spotlight on January 23, 2020, when she announced that they had found a virus 96.2 percent identical to the novel coronavirus. This announcement came at the same time Chinese authorities closed Wuhan as Wuhan was suspected of having a new disease. Her team revealed in a preprint paper that they had discovered a virus that was 96.2 percent identical with the novel coronavirus.
Scientific American reported that Shi initially feared the virus might have originated in her lab. She has since reaffirmed her belief that the WIV did not cross paths with the virus. She said that she had checked lab records and found that all employees tested negative for SARS-2 antibodies.
Shi's supporters claim that even if there was a coverup in the lab, it is unlikely that the staff would have prevented the secret from being leaked, especially with the full-court press of U.S intelligence agencies. According to the U.S. intelligence report, the coronavirus wasn't a bioweapon. It was also not known by Chinese authorities.
In the midst of the controversy, Yuan and Shi have pulled back from the public eye. Although the "comprehensive news” section on the WIV's website used to highlight international collaborations, it has been replaced by politically correct posts about Chinese leaders Xi Jinping and his speeches.
Nielsen-LeRoux stated that she last heard from Yuan in March 2020 at the end of the Wuhan lockdown.
Yuan sent her an email saying that it was difficult to combat the Wuhan infection. The virus is rapidly spreading throughout your country and more people have been infected in the last few days. This situation really worries me. With our collective efforts, I believe we can stop the spread of the virus and that our lives will soon return to normal.
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