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In the early days of 2020, as science sought answers to a mysterious virus outbreak in central China, a prominent Chinese virologist stepped forward to share crucial data with the world.
Zhang Yongzhen’s unveiling of the genome of the virus that causes Covid-19 was a crucial step in the race to combat the pandemic, allowing researchers worldwide to identify the pathogen and develop vaccines to counter it.
He was praised for his integrity by the scientific community, but in the years since, people who know Zhang say he has faced a series of unprecedented obstacles in his career in China – with yet another barrier to his research in the past week is placed. .
On Sunday and Monday, Zhang, 59, slept overnight outside his laboratory at the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center in protest after administrators abruptly closed the facility for renovation work, according to posts on his Weibo social media page.
A post on his page early Wednesday said a “tentative agreement” had been reached for Zhang’s team to resume their scientific work in the laboratory, some of which is related to tracing the origins of Covid-19.
The ordeal is just the latest hurdle for Zhang’s research since 2020, according to a colleague who has been in contact with the Chinese scientist in recent years.
A report by Zhang’s research students posted online also outlined a litany of challenges the scientist has faced since formally transferring his official job to the Shanghai center in 2020, when his 19-year tenure at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention also ended.
Their account, reposted on Zhang’s Weibo page and seen by CNN, has since been deleted. It claims that the Shanghai center, which is affiliated with the city’s Fudan University, has failed to formally recognize Zhang’s work, leaving him without social security and medical benefits, and that it prematurely terminated a five-year cooperation agreement with the scientist has ended.
“That a top scientist in his field, one who has made contributions to the country and humanity, has fallen to this point – is truly sad and horrifying,” the message said.
On Monday, the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center said in a statement that it had closed a number of laboratories due to safety concerns and claimed it had provided additional office and experimental spaces for Zhang and his team.
The “institute always respects… and supports scientific researchers and students in carrying out normal research work,” the statement said.
Images posted on social media this week appeared to show Zhang wrapped in blankets and sleeping on the threshold of the laboratory building as guards hovered above him.
Reached briefly by phone on Monday, Zhang told CNN that the center’s explanation that the laboratory needed to be renovated and that the move was widely reported was “nonsense.”
The research of more than a dozen students had been affected by the lab’s closure, he said, adding that it was “difficult” to say more at the time.
In his post Wednesday, Zhang said his team would “discuss with the (center) the laboratory’s future relocation plan, the guarantee of normal life and scientific research work for students during the transition period,” and work to resolve issues related keep its own agreements with the center. CNN could not independently confirm his report.
The earlier message from Zhang’s students stated that the two days the center had originally allocated to reschedule their scientific work were insufficient. Their laboratory had only been renovated in 2020 and a second laboratory had not been in use since the pandemic, she added.
Neither Zhang nor the online post describing the circumstances that led to his protest linked the lab closure to the sharing of the coronavirus 2020 genome sequence.
Multiple calls from CNN to the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center’s PR department went unanswered on Tuesday.
‘Broken Machine’
Zhang became the first scientist to share the genomic sequence of Covid-19 on January 11, 2020, as the World Health Organization waited for China to do so. provide the data following the announcement almost two weeks earlier of a viral outbreak in the central city of Wuhan.
He was internationally praised for his work and named by Nature as one of the ten people who helped shape science in 2020.
In an interview with the magazine that year, Zhang reflected on his global recognition.
“They say, ‘January 11 was a turning point to understand that this is serious. It was a turning point for China. It was a turning point for the world,” he said.
But in China, Zhang faced challenges in his work that continued from there, according to his longtime collaborator Edward Holmes, a professor at the University of Sydney who published the genome on an international data-sharing website with Zhang’s permission.
After the data’s release, restrictions were placed on Zhang’s lab, preventing it from isolating the Covid virus, Holmes said.
It is unclear whether this move was separate from a Chinese government “rectification” order received by Zhang’s team that at the time reportedly resulted in the temporary closure of the lab a day after the sequence’s release . Zhang told Nature in 2020 that the order merely required his lab to update biosafety protocols after moving equipment during construction work.
Zhang, a scientist at China’s CDC since 2001, was also forced to leave the agency in September 2020, according to a person familiar with the situation.
CNN reached out to China’s National Health Commission, which oversees the CDC, for comment.
These changes for Zhang came as China – already known for its top-down control of the academic sector – increased scrutiny of scientific information related to the virus. This included imposing restrictions from April 2020 on the publication of scientific research into the origins of the new coronavirus.
Beijing has repeatedly defended its scientific transparency and data sharing related to the outbreak.
“The idea that (Zhang) would do anything against China is ridiculous given his (national) pride. But it was clear that the government wanted a certain message to be conveyed, a certain narrative about the outbreak in Wuhan… by releasing the sequence of the virus, he broke that instruction – and everything stems from that,” Holmes said Monday to CNN. .
“Before, before Covid… he was like a machine and now the machine is broken. He has been slowly crushed by this.”
‘No regrets’
In the months after he shared the Covid-19 series, Zhang’s job was transferred to the Shanghai Public Health Center, where he has held a five-year partnership and part-time professorship since 2018. It is unclear whether this step was already planned. works before January 2020.
Since then, he has continued to publish in journals such as Cell and Nature Microbiology on the presence of viruses in animals and nature in China and has received at least two international awards.
His most recent international publications from March looked at coronavirus variants in Shanghai during the early months of the Covid-19 outbreak, and Zhang’s team continues to work on research related to the virus and its emergence.
Current research includes a National Natural Science Foundation of China project at the laboratory, the post said.
In a Weibo post on January 11 to mark the fourth anniversary of his Covid revelation, Zhang seemed to allude to the challenges he has faced in recent years.
“Four years ago this morning, on behalf of the research team, we insisted on putting life first and made the right choice,” Zhang wrote.
“Although we experience constant ups and downs, the heat and cold of human emotions, and the harshness of the world, we have no regrets.”
But the past few years have taken a heavy toll on Zhang, according to Holmes.
“He’s not the same in terms of his productivity, he’s completely different – not the same person at all. It was just extraordinary to see and extraordinary that it got to this point,” he said.
Holmes, who had limited email contact with Zhang during his protest this week, said the Chinese virologist recently told him he had recently failed to file a lawsuit against the Shanghai center over its handling of his contract.
“All this has been going on for a long time… but I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten,” Holmes said.
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