Comment by Gigi K. Gronvall

Proponents of the accidental laboratory leak theory stress the geographic location of the WIV in the city where the pandemic began. They point to the presence of the bat coronavirus RaTG13 strain at the laboratory, arguing that genetic manipulations such as gain-of-function research may have produced SARS-CoV-2. Most scientists refute this theory because there is considerable evolutionary distance between the two viruses. However, the possibility that the laboratory held a different progenitor strain to SARS-CoV-2 that led to a laboratory leak cannot be unequivocally ruled out. China’s obfuscation may mean that we will never have certainty about the origins of the greatest pandemic in more than a century. After all the world has suffered in loss of life, economic hardship, and exacerbated health disparities, there is intrinsic value in knowing the cause. An objectively determined body of scientific facts cannot fully defuse the political rhetoric surrounding the origins investigation, but the search must continue.