GROUND ZERO
The coronavirus pandemic has raised many questions as it has continued its inexorable spread, but perhaps the first of them remains the most contentious: where did Sars-CoV-2 come from?
There has been renewed focus on whether it could have escaped from a Chinese laboratory. However, new findings strengthen the case for a natural origin.
The resurgence of the lab-leak theory – promulgated last year by Donald Trump and his supporters, before being dismissed – has been fuelled by the publication of emails in which Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, discussed it, and dissatisfaction with initial eff orts by the World Health Organization (WHO) to investigate the pandemic’s origins.
Most scientists favour the theory that the virus spilled over from an animal to a human in nature. “The best scientific evidence points to this,” said the Wellcome Trust’s director, Jeremy Farrar, on 4 June. But if there is less evidence to support the lab-leak theory, others
