Why Wuhan? What the Circumstantial Evidence Says About the Origins of COVID-19

Abstract

In the absence of direct evidence on the immediate origins of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, the theories of the case are based on circumstantial evidence. The identification of the first cluster of cases in a wet market in Wuhan naturally focused attention on the leap from animal to human having taken place there. The proximity to the wet market of a biological lab naturally prompted a theory of a lab leak. After it was determined that there were earlier cases than those associated with the wet market, the circumstantial evidence for both these theories was undermined. Meanwhile, irrefutable evidence emerged that the virus mutates readily and gains function on its own. There were no wet markets or biological labs associated with the emergence of the European strain that devastated Italy and Spain and later New York. Nor was there a wet market or biological lab in Kent where the UK strain that devastated that country later emerged. The same is true for Manaus in Brazil whence P1 emerged in a population in which three-quarters of the people had antibodies against previous strains, not to mention South Africa, or India where the latest and most virulent version emerged. In this context, the key piece of circumstantial evidence becomes timing. Epidemiological modeling dates the start of the outbreak in Wuhan to the window between mid-October and mid-November. The 7th World Military Games held from 18 to 27 October 2019 in Wuhan, which brought together nearly 10,000 athletes from over 100 countries, took place in this window. Importantly, this period witnessed elevated numbers of hospital visits in Wuhan and web searches for symptoms also associated with COVID-19. The games thus provided a unique opportunity for a mutation, possibly through recombination, a well-established property of coronaviruses, which then launched the COVID-19 pandemic proper. The departing athletic teams then carried the virus to Europe, explaining the parallel timing: even as the first identification of a novel disease in Wuhan was made on 27 December when three connected cases of unknown pneumonia were reported, retrospective forensic analysis identified a patient in France with COVID-19, also on 27 December 2019. A number of other studies suggest the virus had already spread internationally prior to its identification in Wuhan. The WHO mission investigating the origins of COVID-19 has left open this avenue as a possibility. The circumstantial evidence powerfully supports the hypothesis that the Wuhan virus was in fact the first variant.