China's 'Bat Lady' Shi Zhengli rages at COVID lab-leak origin theory; claims 'no evidence'

After months of quiet and living in the shadows amid the growing clamour demanding a probe into the Wuhan Institute of Virology, China's leading virologist Shi Zhengli, popularly known as the Bat lady, broke her silence recently when she responded to the outrage against her research, that some believe led to the COVID-19 pandemic which has now claimed millions of lives globally. In a short and dismissive interview with the New York Times, Shi Zhengli, the Director of the Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), claimed innocence and denounced the suspicions over the SARS-CoV-2 escaping from the WIV after perhaps infecting one of Zhengli's colleagues.

Pertinently, Zhengli has argued that she cannot produce evidence if none exists. However, her short and succinct rebuttal in no way puts a full stop on the line of questioning as there are a number of questions that the Wuhan Institute of Virology needs to answer regarding the gain of function research that had been conducted by Shi Zhengli's group since 2015. As such, the international demand is for China to open itself to a fair probe into COVID-19's origin.

READ | The Frightening COVID Origin Charge Against China's Shi Zhengli, Wuhan's Bat Virologist

Shi Zhengli says 'no evidence'

Zhengli had been under the radar after the WHO team's visit to China earlier this year, where she informed them of the gain of function research that she had conducted since 2015.  

Responding to the outcry against the zootonic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and the subsequent demands of evidence to submit proofs, Zhengli told the NYT that she 'can't offer any evidence has there is no evidence'. “I don’t know how the world has come to this, constantly pouring filth on an innocent scientist,” she wrote in a text message to the American publication. The WIV Director also shunned the claims that several of her colleagues had been diagnosed with COVID-like symptoms even before the outbreak of the pandemic. Significantly, she denied holding a source of any new coronavirus in her lab before the pandemic.

In a previous interview, just at the onset of the pandemic, Shi Zhengli had given herself and the WIV a clean chit just after a few initial tests and sequencing of the pathogens found in the first few patients of COVID-19 in China. She had claimed that she frantically went through her own lab’s records from the past few years to check for any mishandling of experimental materials, especially during disposal of Coronaviruses, results of which led to a conclusion that none of the sequences matched those of the viruses her team had sampled from bat caves. 

“With a scientific and responsible attitude, I checked our lab research on bat coronaviruses first. Then, at noon on Dec 31 we got the partial genetic sequence of the virus. After comparing the sequence of this virus with the published and unpublished virus sequences in our lab, we concluded that this was a novel Coronavirus. That was when I confirmed this was a newly discovered virus and had nothing to do with a lab leak or anything else,” Zhengli had said. 

With the arguments claiming a lab-leak theory and those against it intensifying with each passing day, there has been a unison demand of an independent probe into the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has been rejected by China. China's defensive approach has also fuelled the suspicions of the possible lab-leak and made a strong case for why it must be investigated. As per some reports, Wuhan Institute of Virology’s main database of samples and viral sequences is said to have been shut off and inaccessible just months before the virus' outbreak. 

Global demand for independent probe

Recently, the United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged cooperation and transparency over the origins of COVID-19 while having a conversation with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi over a call on Friday. Ahead of the G- meet recently, both the US and the UK had extended support to a "timely, transparent and evidence-based independent process" for the next phase of the study of COVID-19 origins by WHO.

A joint statement  by US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson read, "We will also support a timely, transparent and evidence-based independent process for the next phase of the WHO-convened COVID-19 origins study, including in China, and for investigating outbreaks of unknown origin in the future."

President Biden has also ordered a fresh US intelligence inquiry into the origins of the pandemic. Scientists and world leaders are also calling for further investigations to figure out whether the virus originated naturally or leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.