Wuhan scientists were studying viral samples from Laos before the pandemic (Representational image)
Months before the outbreak of COVID-19, scientists at the infamous Wuhan lab in China were studying a coronavirus found in bats in Laos, according to new evidence.
The Daily Mail reported that new evidence collected from US government documents under Freedom of Information support the theory that Covid-19 emerged from bats and that the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). ran away.
In September, scientists from the Pasteur Institute in Paris and the National University in Laos found three viruses — BANAL-52, BANAL-103 and BANAL-236 — from three horseshoe (Rhinolophus) bat species in Laos, which were found to have more viruses. More similar to SARS-CoV-2 than any other known virus.
Of these, Banal-52 shared 96.8 percent of its genome with SARS-CoV-2.
Although the striking similarity between the two has led to speculation that SARS-CoV-2 may have originated in the bat strain of Laos, the more than 1,000-mile distance between the two countries closed the theory.
However, newly leaked emails between the EcoHealth Alliance – the US-based nonprofit that helped fund some of the research into WIV – and US government funders reveal that “bats and other high-risk species” Viral DNA from Wuhan was sent between June 2017. and May 2019, the report said.
The email was traced to a freedom of information request made by a US-based campaign group called the White Coat West Project.
In addition to working in Laos, the EcoHealth Alliance also investigated the cave bat virus in Yunnan, China, and sent samples to scientists in Wuhan for further study, the report said.
Last year researchers at the Pasteur Institute identified the RaTG13 virus from horseshoe bats in Yunnan. It was 96.1 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2.
It’s been two years since the pandemic, and the world is yet to respond to the origins of COVID-19.
The Daily Mail quoted New Zealand data scientist Gilles Damneuf as saying the new evidence provides a “plausible” route for the viral spread from Laos bats to the people of Wuhan.
“We now have a very plausible direct route with two options,” wrote Damneuf, a member of the pandemic-origin research group DRASTIC, in a blogpost.
DRASTIC stands for ‘Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team investigating COVID-19’. It has set itself the mission of discovering the origin of SARS-CoV-2.
“Number one, a Wuhan bat sampler infected on a field sampling trip. Number two, a research accident in Wuhan when bat coronaviruses like Laos banl are manipulated,” Demneuf said.
However, records of genetic sequences collected from both Yunnan and Laos were removed from an online database at the Wuhan Institute in September 2019, months before the pandemic hit the world, for experts exploring the origins of the pandemic. It had become difficult.
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