Shi Zhengli said that if we don’t study the unknown viruses, there could be another epidemic.
Shi Zhengli, virologist known for his work on coronavirus in bats, said in an interview on Chinese public television that the viruses discovered now are “just the tip of the iceberg” and called for cooperation international in the fight against epidemics.
Known as the “bat woman” of China, the deputy director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology said that research on viruses requires scientists and governments to be transparent and cooperative, and that he is ” very unfortunate “when science is politicized.
“If we want to prevent humans from suffering the next epidemic of infectious diseases, we must go ahead to find out about these unknown viruses carried by wild animals in the wild and give early warnings,” Shi told CGTN . “If we don’t study them, there will probably be another epidemic.”
His interview with CGTN television coincided with the start of the National People’s Congress, an annual meeting of the top Chinese leaders in Beijing. This year’s AFN comes as the country’s relations with the United States deteriorate further, with President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo both saying that the coronavirus that is sweeping the world is probably linked at the Wuhan laboratory.
China has denied the charges. Shi said that the genetic characteristics of the viruses she worked with did not match those of the coronavirus spreading in humans. In an article on social media, she wrote that she “would swear on my life” that the pandemic had nothing to do with her laboratory. In another interview with CGTN over the weekend, the director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Wang Yanyi, said that the idea that the virus had escaped from the laboratory was “pure invention”.
The epidemic has infected more than 5.4 million people worldwide and killed more than 345,000 people.
(This story has not been edited by GalacticGaming staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
