Question
Was COVID-19 created in a laboratory?
Answer
No.
Explanation
According to a survey done in the US in March 2020, 29% of Americans believed COVID-19 (hereafter referred to as SARS-CoV-2) was intentionally or accidentally created in a laboratory.
That same month, a review into the origin of SARS-CoV-2 concluded that the genomic data shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus. Its main two arguments are:
- Computational predictions done in January 2020 suggest that SARS-CoV-2 uses a different method for binding with human receptor ACE2 (which is how the virus enters cells) than SARS-CoV did and this method is not ideal. One would expect the virus to either use the same method or a better one if it was human-created.
- SARS-CoV-2 is not based on any existing virus backbone. One would expect any of the reverse-genetic systems available for betacoronaviruses to have been used as a template.
Sources
Andersen, K.G., Rambaut, A., et al., The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2, (Natural Medicine, Volume 26, 2020)
Pew Research Center, 'Nearly three-in-ten Americans believe COVID-19 was made in a lab', 8 April 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/08/nearly-three-in-ten-americans-believe-covid-19-was-made-in-a-lab, (accessed 9 October 2020)