beijing the chinese laboratory accused by top american officials of being the source of the coronavirus pandemic conducts research on the worlds most dangerous diseasesus president donald trump and secretary of state mike pompeo have both claimed that there is evidence the pathogen came from the lab in wuhan the city where the disease was first detected late last yearbut the world health organization said washington had offered no evidence to support the speculative claims and scientists believe the coronavirus jumped from animals to humans possibly at a wuhan market selling wild animalslockdown 30 latest updatesthe top us epidemiologist anthony fauci has echoed the whos statement telling national geographic that all evidence so far strongly indicates a natural originchina has strongly denied the allegations but speculation and conspiracy theories have persistedhere are some key questions about the wuhan institute of virologywork by the labs scientists helped to shed light on the covid19 pathogen in the early days of the outbreak in wuhanin february they published work concluding that the new virus shared a 796 percent sequence identity to the sars coronavirus and that it was 96 percent identical at the wholegenome level to a coronavirus found in batsthe labs researchers had already conducted extensive investigations on the links between bats and disease outbreaks in china and had highlighted the need to prepare for viruses potentially spreading out of their natural reservoirs into human communitiesscientists think covid19 originated in bats and could have been transmitted to people via another mammal like a pangolin but there is no definitive answer so farthe wuhan institute houses the largest virus bank in asia which preserves more than 1500 strainsthe complex contains asias first maximumsecurity lab equipped to handle class 4 pathogens p4 such as ebolathe 300millionyuan 42 million p4 lab opened in 2018 a p3 lab has been in operation since 2012more on covid19coronavirus pandemic complete coveragelockdown 30 whats allowed and whats not in the three zonesits time to mask up and stay safe join tois maskindia campaignmhas guidelines for home isolationtrust the newspaper for your daily verified newswhile the us intelligence community said it had concluded the coronavirus was not humanmade it added that it would continue to investigate if the outbreak started from contact with infected animals or from an accident at the wuhan labus diplomatic cables seen by the washington post earlier said that officials were concerned about inadequate safety standards related to researchers handling of sarslike bat coronaviruses in the highsecurity labthe institute has said it received samples of the thenunknown virus on december 30 determined the viral genome sequence on january 2 and submitted information on the pathogen to the who on january 11shi zhengli one of chinas leading experts on bat coronaviruses and deputy director of the wuhan p4 lab said she would bet her life that the new coronavirus had nothing to do with the lab according to chinese state mediaand in an interview with scientific american shi said the sarscov2 genome sequence did not match