Chasing a likely lab leak

A scientist couple from Pune, Dr Monali C. Rahalkar and Dr Rahul Bahulikar, has been on an online expedition to trace the origin and course of the virus behind the pandemic. They made two interesting discoveries. Here, they recount their exciting journey

The second wave of Covid-19 is sweeping through India, and we are expecting a third wave. More than 3.5 million people on the globe have perished in the pandemic. Yet, no one knows how exactly the deadly virus, Sars-CoV-2, emerged and spread to humans.

We need to know how it happened, so as to prevent the next pandemic. But, even a year after the outbreak, no robust process has been established for examining the origin of the virus.

Until last month, the possibility that the virus escaped from a lab was treated as a conspiracy theory. Today, things have changed, and a lab origin of the virus remains a possible theory. The US president and the former director of the Centers for Disease Control, besides many renowned scientists, have called for a proper investigation of the origin.

As a scientific couple, we were intrigued by the virus and started an online expedition at the end of March 2020. The journey led us to discover the link between a copper mine and the nearest relative of the virus.

Being scientists in biology, we were only a step ahead of laymen in understanding the pandemic. We began by reading scientific papers on coronaviruses and Covid-19. We were fixated on reading the work of Professor Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina. Baric has been studying coronaviruses for decades and had created Sars-like chimeric viruses in the lab.