Institute of Virology Wuhan

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China People's RepublicPeople's Republic of China Institute of Virology Wuhan
Website http://english.whiov.cas.cn/

The Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences ( Chinese 中国科学院 武汉 病毒 研究所 , English Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)) is a virology research facility based in the Jiangxia district of Wuhan , in the Chinese province of Hubei .

history

Founded in 1956 as the Wuhan Microbiology Laboratory within the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), a series of renaming followed: South China Institute for Microbiology (1961), Institute for Microbiology Wuhan (1962), Institute for Microbiology of Hubei Province (1970), since 1978 the current one Name, Institute of Virology Wuhan .

In 2015, the country's first BSL-4 laboratory was inaugurated in the WIV . The center for the collection of virus cultures , completed in 2018, is the largest virus bank in Asia with around 1,500 strains.

The researcher Shi Zhengli (together with Cui Jie) found the origin of SARS . On April 4, 2018, she reported the transmission of coronaviruses from bats to pigs, and on March 2, 2019, she warned that it was likely that new coronaviruses would migrate to humans in China.

The U.S. government has funded laboratory research into coronavirus transmission for the past decade. The US National Institutes of Health awarded the Wuhan Institute a $ 3.7 million research grant.

Allegations related to the 2019/2020 COVID-19 pandemic

The institute came into the public eye when it was announced that the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 had been developed as part of an alleged Chinese bioweapons research program. However, this theory was debunked as a conspiracy theory by the Washington Post . The Washington Post quoted US experts explaining why the institute was unsuitable for bioweapons research, that most countries had given up bioweapons research, and that there was no evidence that the virus was genetically engineered. In February 2020, the Financial Times quoted virus expert and leading coronavirus researcher Trevor Bedford: "We have empirical evidence that the mutations [in the virus] are completely consistent with natural evolution."

In February and April 2020, speculation was again raised about the institute as a possible source of the coronavirus epidemic : The virus was released into the environment through improper behavior by the researchers. In fact, American scientists who visited the institute in 2018 expressed serious concerns about the safety standards prevailing at the institute. Shi Zhengli , virologist and researcher at WIV, contradicted this representation . In a letter in the journal Nature Medicine , Western researchers discussed the various explanations and came to the conclusion that the virus was not deliberately manipulated, there is currently no evidence for or against a connection to a laboratory and they do not consider such a connection to be plausible.

US President Donald Trump stated again on May 1, 2020 that there were indications that the corona virus could originate from the Institute of Virology in Wuhan - which the laboratory director, Yuan Zhiming, denied.

Research Center

The general manager is Yanyi Wang and the Communist Party representative is Changcai He. According to the company, 37 research groups are currently organized in five centers:

Individual evidence

  1. ^ History . In: Wuhan Institute of Virology, CAS . Retrieved January 26, 2020.
  2. ↑ China Inaugurates the first biocontainment level 4 laboratory in Wuhan. Wuhan Institute of Virology, CAS, February 3, 2015, accessed January 26, 2020 .
  3. ↑ David Cyranoski: Inside the Chinese lab poised to study world's most dangerous pathogens . In: Nature . February 23, 2017, doi : 10.1038 / nature.2017.21487 .
  4. ↑ a b Fabian Kretschmer: Dispute about the origin of the virus. Does corona come from a laboratory in China? In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. April 18, 2020, accessed April 19, 2020 .
  5. ↑ The world is now distancing itself from China RND April 23, 2020.
  6. ↑ Revealed: US government gave $ 3.7million grant to Wuhan lab at center of coronavirus leak scrutiny that was performing experiments on bats from the caves where the disease is believed to have originated. April 12, 2020, accessed April 16, 2020.
  7. ↑ Bill Gertz: Coronavirus may have originated in lab linked to China's biowarfare program. In: The Washington Times . January 26, 2020, accessed on January 28, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Josh Taylor: Bat soup, dodgy cures and 'diseasology': the spread of coronavirus misinformation . In: The Guardian . January 31, 2020 ( theguardian.com [accessed February 27, 2020]).
  9. ^ A b Adam Taylor: Experts debunk fringe theory linking China's coronavirus to weapons research. In: The Washington Post . January 29, 2020, accessed on February 27, 2020 .
  10. ↑ Coronavirus was not genetically engineered in a Wuhan lab, says expert. Retrieved February 27, 2020 (English).
  11. ↑ 卷入 疫情 风暴 眼中 的 “ 武汉 病毒 研究所 ” . In: BBC News 中文 . February 5, 2020 (Chinese, bbc.com [accessed February 27, 2020]).
  12. ↑ Josh Rogin: State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses. Washington Post, April 14, 2020
  13. ^ Matt Field: Experts know the new coronavirus is not a bioweapon. They disagree on whether it could have leaked from a research lab.Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists , March 30, 2020 ( online ).
  14. ^ Wuhan Virology Lab Deputy Director Again Slams Coronavirus Conspiracies. In: Caixin Global. Retrieved February 27, 2020 (English).
  15. ↑ Stephen Chen: Bat scientist's cave exploits offer hope to beat virus 'sneakier than Sars'. February 6, 2020, accessed on February 27, 2020 .
  16. ^ Kristian G. Andersen, Andrew Rambaut, W. Ian Lipkin, Edward C. Holmes, Robert F. Garry: The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2 . In: Nature Medicine . tape 26 , no. 4 , April 2020, ISSN  1078-8956 , p. 450–452 , doi : 10.1038 / s41591-020-0820-9 , PMID 32284615 , PMC 7095063 (free full text) - ( nature.com [accessed May 22, 2020]).
  17. ↑ Sanctions - USA increases pressure on China: Corona virus is said to come from a laboratory in Wuhan. berliner-zeitung.de May 1, 2020.
  18. ↑ About Us. Directors. In: Wuhan Institute of Virology. Retrieved March 6, 2020 .

Coordinates: 30 ° 22 ′ 36 ″  N , 114 ° 15 ′ 42 ″  E