US intelligence agencies remain divided on the origin of COVID, but at this point we’re all aware that, at a minimum, there’s a real possibility the virus that killed millions around the world escaped from a Wuhan lab.
China has of course denied that possibility but two US epidemiologists have written an opinion piece today warning that the Wuhan Institute of Virology is still involved in potentially dangerous research with bat coronaviruses. In fact, the lab has discovered a new virus which it says could infect humans and could be even more deadly than COVID-19. It’s research was just published in the Journal Cell.
In a series of experiments, the scientists show that this virus, HKU5-CoV-2, can efficiently infect cells of humans and a wide range of other animal cells. The findings raise the possibility that humans and other animals could be infected by this virus. This coronavirus belongs to a subgroup of viruses that are classified alongside the one that causes MERS and that can have fatality rates far higher than that of the virus that caused the Covid pandemic…
The researchers behind the Cell paper began by studying the new virus in ways that do not require growing live virus — like through computer analysis. But after establishing that the virus can probably infect human cells, the researchers performed experiments with the fully infectious virus. They did not conduct these experiments in a BSL-3 or BSL-4 laboratory but in a laboratory described as BSL-2 plus, a designation that is not standardized and not formally recognized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and that we think is insufficient for work with potentially dangerous respiratory viruses.
MERS had a mortality rate of 35% and in the US would be studied in a BSL-3 or higher lab. But in China the research is being done at this BSL-2 plus level which is something that falls short of BSL-3. And this is the problem what worries the authors. We’ve all learned that viruses have no regard for borders but what can the US do if other countries insist on cutting corners in viral research? […]
— Read More: hotair.com
