New Delhi: Details of the genetic makeup of some early coronavirus samples in China were removed from a US database where they were initially stored at the request of Chinese researchers, according to US officials, following concerns about the confidentiality of the outbreak and its origins. By adding.
The data, which was first submitted to the US-based Sequence Read Archive in March 2020, was “requested to be withdrawn” by the same researcher three months later in June, according to a statement released on Wednesday by the National Institutes of Health. .
The genetic sequences originated in Wuhan, China, where the Covid-19 outbreak was initially concentrated.
The reason for the withdrawal at the time was that the sequence information had been updated and was being submitted to another database, according to the agency. The researcher requested that the data be removed “to avoid version control issues”.
“Submitting investigators retain rights to their data and can request withdrawal of the data,” the agency said. “NIH cannot speculate on motive beyond the investigator’s stated intentions.”
The disappearance of genetic sequences from the database raises concerns about what else has been preserved from the Wuhan outbreak, according to American virologist Jesse Bloom, who found them missing earlier this week. Bloom, who later recovered the data, said it did not provide definitive information as to where or how the virus originated.
Politicians and scientists around the world have been frustrated by China’s efforts to divert attention from the origins of the coronavirus, especially the possibility that it leaked from a Wuhan laboratory. Despite the fact that an expert team from the World Health Organization visited China earlier this year to conduct an investigation, they were denied access to the raw data—and their findings—that the virus could possibly be passed from animals. Done – has been criticized as being premature.
US President Joe Biden has directed US intelligence agencies to re-examine the case, while China has categorically denied any link between the Wuhan laboratory and the outbreak.
“I don’t think we can say much with high confidence,” Bloom, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, said in reference to the origin of the virus. He also said that his findings “remind us of how little we know”.
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