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Wuhan Lab Leak: From Coronavirus Conspiracy To Possibility

Security personnel stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan as members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus make a visit to the institute in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on Feb. 3, 2021. (Photo by Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
Security personnel stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan as members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus make a visit to the institute in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on Feb. 3, 2021. (Photo by Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

The Wuhan Institute of Virology is a sprawling campus of mostly red brick buildings with manicured lawns and camera-lined driveways nestled into the hills of Hubei Province, China.

Housed in one of the buildings is the country’s first Biosafety Level 4 lab, which opened in January of 2018. It is from this lab that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, may have originated, according to a theory once considered far-fetched.

Here & Now‘s Peter O’Dowd speaks with Betsy McKay of the Wall Street Journal about how this theory has evolved.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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