New Delhi: As the entire world is scrambling to find answers to the origin of the lethal Covid-19 virus. In this situation, a group of amateur sleuths called ‘DRASTIC’, with very few resources, has claimed to reveal the dark secrets of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), the media reported Thursday.
‘DRASTIC’ stands for ‘decentralised radical autonomous search team investigating Covid-19’. The organisation has set itself the mission of exploring the origins of SARS-CoV-2.
“Thanks to ‘DRASTIC’, we now know that the WIV had an extensive collection of coronaviruses gathered over many years of foraging in the bat caves. Many of them – including the closest-known relative to the pandemic virus, SARS-CoV-2 – came from a mineshaft where three men died from a suspected SARS-like disease in 2012,” Newsweek reported quoting members of ‘DRASTIC’.
“We know WIV was actively working with these viruses, using inadequate safety protocols. The methods could have triggered the pandemic and that the lab and Chinese authorities have gone to great lengths to conceal these activities,” the report added.
According to the report, the first cases appeared weeks before the outbreak at the Huanan wet market. The market was once thought to be ground zero from where the coronavirus had originated.
Also read: Researchers at China’s Wuhan bio lab sought hospital care before Covid-19: Report
None of this proves that the pandemic started in the Wuhan lab. But the evidence assembled by ‘DRASTIC’ amounts to what prosecutors call probable cause – a strong, evidence-based case for a full investigation.
It is not clear that the best efforts of the US and other nations to investigate the lab-leak hypothesis will ever turn up unequivocal evidence one way or another, at least without the full cooperation of China, which is unlikely, the report said.
Meanwhile, the former head of the US Food and Drug Administration recently said that there is less evidence now to show that the novel coronavirus developed naturally – jumping from an animal to humans, strengthening the argument for Covid-19 originating in a lab.
“The side of the ledger that suggests that this could have come out of a lab has continued to expand, and the side of the ledger that suggests this has come from of a zoonotic source, come out of nature, really hasn’t budged. If anything, you can argue that that side of the ledger has contracted,” the ‘New York Post’ quoted Scott Gottlieb as saying on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation’.
Last year, then US President Donald Trump had hit out at China for not stopping the Covid-19 pandemic. He used the term ‘China virus’ and urged his supporters not to call it coronavirus. He said the name coronavirus sounds like a ‘beautiful place’ in Italy. However, the comment attracted a lot of criticism against Trump.