Wuhan Institute of Virology

History

The WIV was founded in 1956 as the Wuhan Microbiology Laboratory under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). It was established by scientists Gao Shangyin, a graduate of Soochow University (Suzhou),^[7] and Chen Huagui.^[8] In 1961, it became the South China Institute of Microbiology, and in 1962 was renamed Wuhan Microbiology Institute. In 1970, it became the Microbiology Institute of Hubei Province when the Hubei Commission of Science and Technology took over the administration. In June 1978, it was returned to the CAS and renamed Wuhan Institute of Virology.^[9]


In 2003, the Chinese academy of Sciences approved the construction of mainland China's first^[a] biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory at the WIV. In 2014, the WIV's National Bio-safety Laboratory was built at a cost of 300 million yuan (US$44 million), in collaboration and with assistance from the French government's CIRI lab).^[10][5][11] The new laboratory building has 3000 m² of BSL-4 space, and also 20 BSL-2 and two BSL-3 laboratories.^[12] The BSL-4 facilities were accredited by the China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment (CNAS) in January 2017,^[5] with the BSL-4 level lab put into operation in January 2018.^[13] The highest level biosafety installation is necessary because the institute investigates highly dangerous viruses, such as SARS, influenza H5N1, Japanese encephalitis, and dengue.^[14]


The National Bio-safety Laboratory has strong ties to the Galveston National Laboratory in the University of Texas.^[15] It also had ties with Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory until WIV staff scientists Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng, who were also remunerated by the Canadian government, were escorted from the Canadian lab for undisclosed reasons in July 2019.^[16] Researchers from the WIV have, in the past, collaborated with international scientists in the creation of chimeric coronavirus.^[17] Some researchers (notably Richard Ebright) believe this work falls under the definition of gain of function research, but many other experts dispute this classification.^[18]


A number of safety precautions were taken into consideration when building the Wuhan lab. The lab was built far away from any flood plain. It was also built to withstand a magnitude-7 earthquake, even though the region has no history of earthquakes. Many Wuhan lab staff were trained at a BSL-4 lab in Lyon, France.^[5] Researchers were also trained in Australia, Canada, the United States and then in-house before the lab was operational.^[12] Scientists such as U.S. molecular biologist Richard H. Ebright, who had expressed concern of previous escapes of the SARS virus at Chinese laboratories in Beijing and had been troubled by the pace and scale of China's plans for expansion into BSL-4 laboratories,^[5] called the institute a "world-class research institution that does world-class research in virology and immunology" while he noted that the WIV is a world leader in the study of bat coronaviruses.^[15]