Danielle Anderson, an Australian virologist who was the only foreign scientist to have undertaken research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s BSL-4 lab, rejects the notion of a “lab leak” of the novel coronavirus and gives a much different picture of the workings of the lab than the media “narratives.” Anderson worked at the Wuhan lab until November 2019. Speaking to Bloomberg News, Anderson says, “Half-truths and distorted information have obscured an accurate accounting of the lab’s functions and activities, which were more routine than how they’ve been portrayed in the media.”
“It’s not that it was boring, but it was a regular lab that worked in the same way as any other high-containment lab. What people are saying is just not how it is.”
Anderson was on the ground in Wuhan when experts believed the virus, now known as SARS-CoV-2, was beginning to spread. Daily visits for a period in late 2019 put her in close proximity to many others working at the research center, which had opened in 2018 as an extension of a 65-year-old microbiology lab. She was part of a group that gathered each morning at the Chinese Academy of Sciences to catch a bus that shuttled them to the WIV about 20 miles away. As the sole foreigner, Anderson stood out, and she said the other researchers there looked out for her. “We went to dinners together, lunches, we saw each other outside of the lab,” she said.
