Arab News Japan

TOKYO: A report from the Medical Note website by Tokyo Medical University Hospital’s Traveler Center Director Atsuo Hamada, suggests that researchers probably don’t need to look at Wuhan’s Institute of Virology for a source of the COVID-19 coronavirus.

“It is reasonable to assume that the epidemic originated from small animals sold in the Wuhan market,” Hamada wrote. “However, depending on the results of WHO’s ongoing investigation, the involvement of the Wuhan Institute of Virology may be reconsidered. I think that investigating the origin of such an epidemic will be indispensable information so that the historical tragedy like this one will not be repeated again.”

Japan-China relations may be strained, but Japan has largely avoided pointing the finger at the Chinese government or Chinese institutions for causing the pandemic in 2019.

Hamada continued: “The South China Seafood Wholesale Market, which was heavily infected, is one of the largest markets in central China. There are more than 1,000 stores and it seems that there were a lot of visitors in December 2019. This market is also famous as a place to get food animals, and small animals such as mice and snakes were sold alive. It is believed that these small animals carried the new coronavirus, and that the clerks and customers inhaled the virus and become infected. After that, the virus caused pneumonia and spread to otherpeople.”

“The Wuhan Institute of Virology is located about 10 km across the Yangtze River from the South China Seafood Wholesale Market. The Institute had been conducting research to capture bats and detect SARS-like coronaviruses. It seems that there was also joint research with the United States and Canada. For this reason, the United States suspects a link with this institute as the cause of the outbreak of the new coronavirus in Wuhan. But according to the survey results at this time, ‘the possibility of leakage from the laboratory was extremely low.’ There was also a suspicion that the new coronavirus itself was an artificial virus created in the laboratory, but genetic analysis has revealed that it is a naturally occurring virus.”

Hamada did point out that such pathogens leaking from laboratories is not just the stuff of science fiction movies and cited examples of the Soviet and Italian influenza epidemics.

But, he concludes, “The current BSL-4 facility [in Japan] has been set up by WHO and other countries with strict facility standards, and in reality it is not in a situation where outsiders can invade. I think this was the same at the Wuhan Institute.”