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Berit Uhlmann
It was an outbreak that could easily have led to disaster. In 2004, two students in a Beijing laboratory became infected with the pathogen causing the lung disease Sars and apparently carried the virus into the city without being noticed. At least seven other people became infected and one died. The outbreak was contained relatively quickly, but what little known about its reasons was confusing and deeply worrying: the two students had never worked with the dangerous virus. And they apparently became infected independently of one another at intervals of several days. Incidents like this are one reason why, when searching for the origin of Sars-CoV-2, the question of the role of laboratories in the Chinese city of Wuhan is repeatedly asked. The pathogen was detected for the first time in a market in the megacity.