The origin of the virus remains unknown based on current published data, said Shi Zhengli. (File)
Beijing:
After firmly denying US claims of coronavirus from a bio-laboratory in its first Wuhan epicenter, Chinese researchers have disputed the widely held view that the deadly virus originated from a city wet market selling live animals .
A leading Chinese virologist, whose mysterious disappearance has sparked speculation about the new coronavirus from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), was interviewed for the first time on Chinese public television on Tuesday, where she warned that such viruses were only the “tip of the iceberg” and regretted that science was “politicized”.
Shi Zhengli, known as “Bat Woman” for his passionate research on bats and the viruses associated with them, had earlier this month refuted “rumors” of his defection in the West on his WeChat account on Chinese social networks. She also published nine photos from her recent life.
Chinese scientists on Wednesday dismissed reports that the deadly virus that had struck Wuhan and then turned into a crippling pandemic came from the seafood market in Wuhan.
Recent Shanghai-based research targeting local confirmed cases of coronaviruses has once again proven that attacks on a seafood market in central China’s Hubei province for the origin of the virus are absurd, the daily reported. official Global Times.
Study results, published on the website of the best academic journal Nature on May 20, imply that the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, may not be the birthplace of COVID-19 , although the virus epidemic that started in Wuhan had a strong link to market contacts.
Based on the analysis of 112 quality samples from 326 confirmed cases reported in Shanghai between January 20 and February 25, the researchers found two main lines (clade I and clade II) with a history of differential exposure to during the first phase of the epidemic in Wuhan, he said. .
There is no direct evidence that cross-species transmission of COVID-19 originally occurred in the Huanan market in Wuhan, although it was a likely location for human-to-human transmission of the virus due to of its relatively high crowd density, according to a researcher. of the team, who preferred to remain anonymous, said Global Times, a public agency.
“The origin of the virus remains unknown based on current published data,” she told the daily. “There is still a continuing effort on the part of scientists to determine the intermediate host for the coronavirus and to conduct comprehensive and detailed virus screening studies.”
The research team was composed of members of Shanghai scientific and medical research institutions, including the Shanghai Public Health Center, Ruijin Hospital affiliated with the Jiao Tong University School of Medicine in Shanghai, and the ‘Shanghai Institute of Hematology.
China is resisting growing pressure from the United States and leaders of many countries to investigate the origin of the virus, which was originally discovered in the Wuhan wet market.
Besides US President Donald Trump, who has stepped up the call for an investigation into the origin of the virus and whether he escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Britain, Australia and the Chancellor Angela Merkel called on Beijing to be more transparent about the origins of COVID-19.
China’s new story followed as the World Health Assembly, a decision-making body of the Geneva-based World Health Organization, recently passed a unanimous resolution to probe the origin of the virus.
China, which also supported the resolution, called for a comprehensive assessment of the global response to COVID-19 to summarize experiences and address gaps after the pandemic is brought under control.
