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Wuhan lab had three live bat coronaviruses: Chinese state media
BEIJING, May 24, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – The Chinese virology institute at
the centre of US allegations it may have been the source of the
COVID-19 pandemic has three live strains of bat coronavirus on-site,
but none match the new global contagion, its director has said.
Scientists think COVID-19 — which first emerged in the central
Chinese city of Wuhan and has killed more than 340,000 people
worldwide — originated in bats and could have been transmitted to
people via another mammal.
But the director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology told state
broadcaster CGTN that claims made by US President Donald Trump and
others the virus could have leaked from the facility were “pure
fabrication”.
In the interview filmed on May 13 but broadcast Saturday night,
Wang Yanyi said the centre has “isolated and obtained some
coronaviruses from bats”.
“Now we have three strains of live viruses… But their highest
similarity to SARS-CoV-2 only reaches 79.8 percent,” she said,
referring to the coronavirus strain that causes COVID-19.
One of their research teams, led by Professor Shi Zhengli, has been
researching bat coronaviruses since 2004 and focused on the “source
tracing of SARS”, the strain behind another virus outbreak nearly two
decades ago.
“We know that the whole genome of SARS-CoV-2 is only 80 percent
similar to that of SARS. It’s an obvious difference,” she said.
“So, in Professor Shi’s past research, they didn’t pay attention to
such viruses which are less similar to the SARS virus.”
– Plans for more labs –
Conspiracy rumours that the biosafety lab was involved in the
outbreak swirled online for months before Trump and US Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo brought the theory into the mainstream by claiming
that there is evidence the pathogen came from the institute.
The United States and Australia have called in recent weeks for an
investigation into the origins of the pandemic.
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Chinese scientists have said that the virus first emerged at a
market selling live animals in Wuhan, though officials in Beijing more
recently cast doubt about its origins.
Chinese Foreign minister Wang Yi on Sunday blasted what he called
efforts by US politicians to “fabricate rumours” about the pathogen’s
origins and “stigmatise China”.
He said China would be “open” to international cooperation to
identify the source of the novel coronavirus, as long as any
investigation is “free of political interference”.
The World Health Organization has said Washington offered no
evidence to support the “speculative” claims about the Wuhan lab.
The Wuhan lab has said it received samples of the then-unknown
virus on December 30, determined the viral genome sequence on January
2 and submitted information on the pathogen to the WHO on January 11.
Wang Yanyi said in the interview that before it received samples in
December, their team had never “encountered, researched or kept the
virus”.
“In fact, like everyone else, we didn’t even know the virus
existed,” she said. “How could it have leaked from our lab when we
never had it?”
At a press conference Sunday, Zhao Chenxin, deputy
secretary-general of the National Development and Reform Commission,
said every Chinese prefecture must have its own P3 laboratory to ramp
up preparations against infectious diseases.
Apart from the P3 lab plans — the second-highest biosafety
classification for labs handling pathogens — Zhao said each city
should also have a lower-level P2 laboratory so they could “quickly
respond in a major epidemic”.
The Wuhan institute has both P3 and P4 labs.
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