LETTER FROM SHANGHAI
He finally got his lab back, at the cost of nights out and a very public battle. Zhang Yongzhen, the first researcher to publish the genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 more than four years ago, is in open conflict with the institution that hosts his team’s work. The affair came to light on April 28. That morning, Mr. Zhang and his colleagues arrived at work but found the door to the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center locked, in the far southern suburbs of China’s most populous city. The disagreement with management over the end of his contract escalated.
As a determined man, Zhang Yongzhen decides to stage a sit-in until the center guards have unlocked the doors. Posted by his student researchers on Weibo, China’s Twitter, photos taken by those who were able to stay by his side show him tired and disheveled, sitting on a chair in front of security guards. He then appears lying on a mattress, under a duvet, sleeping outside, with a Thermos next to him, bottles of water, bags of food and always the team of guards. The boxes on the ground were soaked by heavy rain. “I will not leave, I will not give up, I do it for science and truth”, he wrote in a soon-to-be-deleted post on the social network. The scientist stays outside for three nights.
Mr. Zhang started in this laboratory five years earlier. After almost two decades at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, an institution closer to the central government, he was seduced by the contact with the management of the establishment, linked to the prestigious Fudan University. The director at the time, Zhu Tongyu, had promised him 3.5 million yuan (450,000 euros) in annual funding so that he would not waste his time searching for funds and could focus on “first-rate scientific research” on viruses; he even lent him his car. Zhang will be proud to have the center’s name appear six times in scientific journals Nature And cell between 2018 and 2020. Initially a temporary worker, he was to be established within two years.
Crucial advance for tests and vaccines
The first days of 2020 come. On January 3, his laboratory receives samples from a patient suffering from this new type of pneumonia which is sweeping the city of Wuhan. In the magazine Time, he recounted how his team worked two days and two nights non-stop, using the latest technologies to establish the genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 for the first time on January 5. He contacts the head of respiratory medicine at Wuhan Central Hospital, as well as the Ministry of Health, travels to the Hubei capital on January 8 to explain to local health officials his understanding of the virus, suggesting measures public protection.
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