China: Wuhan lab deserves Nobel Prize in medicine for COVID-19 study

Speaking at a press conference Thursday, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhau Lijian responded to allegations that the lab itself was responsible for the pandemic, with accusations ranging from claiming it either deliberately engineered and spread the virus or that a leak in the facility caused the outbreak.

"If those that first publish high-quality viral genomes were to be accused of making the virus, then Prof. Luc Montagnier, who first discovered the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), would be considered the culprit of AIDS rather than awarded the Nobel Prize, and Mr. Louis Pasteur, who discovered microbes, would be held accountable for the disease-causing bacteria all around the globe," Lijian said.

"By analogy, the team in Wuhan should be awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for their research on COVID-19, instead of being criticized."

The statement comes as the Wuhan virology lab was listed as a candidate for the 2021 Outstanding Science and Technology Achievement Prize of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) for their role in helping identify the pathogeny of COVID-19, according to the Chinese state media outlet Global Times.

The theory that the virus was leaked by the Wuhan lab has been around since the pandemic began, but had readily been dismissed by experts. Now, however, some experts are saying this dismissal may have been premature, bringing the topic back to the forefront.

Back in April, 18 scientists wrote a letter in Science Magazine calling for a more in-depth investigation into the exact origins of the virus, this time taking the lab into account.

Despite greater calls for an investigation, Shi Zhengli, the "bat-woman" virologist at the Wuhan lab who has been at the center of many conspiracies, dismissed these allegations in a recent interview with The New York Times.

It is widely accepted that the virus originally came from bats, which are known to host several contagious diseases, many of which are zoonotic – meaning they can be transferred from animals to humans. Coronaviruses, one of which, SARS-CoV-2, causes COVID-19, are one viral family known to be hosted by bats. A recent study of bats in Switzerland reaffirmed this, having traced numerous types of viral families to the flying mammals, including zoonotic pathogens, though many of them could only be transfered to humans after first being transferred from bats to another animal. 

It was widely believed that COVID-19 was one such pathogen, being transferred to humans from bats through another animal, though which animal it was and exactly how remains a mystery.