Could Covid-19 have come from a lab leak?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 17 June 2021
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For the last year discussions about the origins of Covid-19 have divided people all over the world. Some say it came from nature and others believe it could have escaped from a lab. The idea of a lab accident was originally dismissed as a conspiracy theory but it’s starting to gain attention all over again.
Now President Biden has given the US intelligence service 90 days to try and investigate the virus's origins further.
Many still believe the virus jumped to humans from animals but some say that we need to be open minded until we have all of the data.
But could Covid-19 really have come from a lab?
Presenter: Kavita Puri Producer: Olivia Noon Researcher: Kirsteen Knight
(Virus research in a lab. Tek Science/Getty images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the enquiry on the BBC World Service with me, Kavita Puri, each week one question |
| 0:07.2 | four expert witnesses and an answer. |
| 0:12.7 | The ground floor of a seafood market in Wuhan, China is now closed, it's boarded up, |
| 0:22.3 | the sign is long gone, there are security guards at the entrance. |
| 0:27.4 | A few strewn fishing nets and empty boxes are all the hint that this was once a busy, |
| 0:33.4 | noisy, bustling market, now it's frozen in time. |
| 0:39.8 | It's believed to be the place where many of the first cases of Covid-19 were found, but |
| 0:45.6 | what's still unclear, 18 months on, is how Covid-19 could have entered this market in |
| 0:52.0 | the first place. |
| 0:53.8 | In the early days, scientists said the origin of the virus came from nature, but another |
| 0:59.2 | theory, first dismissed as a conspiracy by many, is taking greater hold, that it could have |
| 1:06.0 | come from a nearby laboratory just a few miles away in Wuhan that was known to be investigating |
| 1:12.6 | coronaviruses. |
| 1:14.2 | US President Joe Biden recently ordered an investigation, he's given the intelligence |
| 1:19.9 | community 90 days to report back on the origins. |
| 1:26.6 | So this week on the inquiry we ask, could Covid-19 have come from a lab leak? |
| 1:42.1 | Part one, the bat cave. |
| 1:46.6 | The conventional theory was that the virus will have been passed on from something like |
| 1:52.2 | a bat to a mammal, say a pangolin or something like that. |
| 1:56.5 | It would have originated somewhere, say, in South China and the UNAM District. |
| 2:05.8 | This is Jonathan Calvert, the editor of the investigations team at the Sunday Times. |
| 2:11.6 | When he started covering the pandemic last year, he thought, like most people, that the |
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