With the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) epidemic, many Western academic institutions and media outlets have referenced the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, one of China’s biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) maximum-security biolabs.
The majority of these mentions refer to an article titled “Inside the Chinese lab poised to study world’s most dangerous pathogens” that appeared in the science journal Nature in February 2017.
That article discussed certain “concerns” that the lab was about to undertake experiments on highly hazardous pathogens, a subject germane to the situation now playing out in China.
First, this article said that China’s BSL-4 lab, right from its inception, was intended not only for disease outbreak response, but also to increase China’s authoritativeness in the field of microbiological research.
When Japan built its first BSL-4 lab in 1981, it was limited to operating as a BSL-3 biolab, handling only lower risk pathogens. This changed in 2015, with an outbreak of the Ebola virus, when it started working on ways to fight biosafety hazards.
The Wuhan lab was built in 2015, and immediately began conducting research into high-risk pathogens such as hemorrhagic fever and SARS, but kept its high level biosafety risk under wraps.
Second, the Wuhan biolab is situated on the Yangtze River flood plain, and even though no major earthquake has ever been recorded there and the facility is constructed to withstand a magnitude 7 earthquake, there are densely populated areas nearby.
In the event of a major natural disaster, the presence of the facility is sure to exacerbate the effect on the local populace.
Given their lack of experience regarding events such as these, the ability of the facility’s personnel to effectively respond to a major natural disaster also poses a significant risk.
Finally, and most importantly, whether the facility can operate in a stable, secure fashion, with transparency and each individual working there being able to speak out, is crucial.
Even though the article was written three years ago, and it was specifically talking about the biolab and not medical institutions, it addresses the topics of planning and management, compound risk assessment implementation, personnel experience and training, and data transparency, mainly from the perspective of management and data structures, and it is very much applicable to an evaluation of the 2019-nCoV outbreak.
Looking at that article, all conspiracy theories aside, it is quite apparent that a lack of transparency is at the heart of how the 2019-nCoV situation has got out of control.
It also explains how the WHO misjudged the epidemic’s potential in its initial stages, allowing it to evolve into a global crisis.
It is therefore possible that the large scale of the crisis was caused, not because of the nature of the virus itself, but the rigid vertical, opaque framework of the system that allowed the epidemic to spiral out of control.
This is even more evident from the scenes broadcast from the frontline hospitals in Wuhan and other cities in China.
In addition, it was due to the centralized nature of the political system in China, which has made it difficult to understand the situation, that the WHO recently upgraded the 2019-nCoV to a “public health emergency of international concern.”
For Taiwan, which is prevented from joining the WHO, how to obtain the latest information about the outbreak to adjust its response to the crisis is an issue of pressing importance.
Shih Po-jung is a media commentator.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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