Yet another piece of the pandemic puzzle has fallen into place - after being hidden in plain sight until it was wiped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology's (WIV) website.
Unearthed by The National Pulse's Natalie Winters, a Nov. 2017 report titled (no really): "Bats in China carry all the ingredients to make a new SARS virus," describes how researchers at the WIV had identified 'all the genes to make a SARS coronavirus similar to the epidemic strain,' among 11 new strains of viruses collected in horseshoe bats.
“After five years of surveying bats in a cave in southern China’s Yunnan Province, Zhengli Shi and colleagues discovered 11 new strains of SARS-related viruses in horseshoe bats (especially in Rhinolophus sinicus). Within the strains, the researchers found all the genes to make a SARS coronavirus similar to the epidemic strain, says Shi, a virologist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
These new strains are more similar to the human version of SARS than were previously identified bat viruses, says Matthew Frieman, a virologist at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. -PLOS Pathogens
Also in 2017, a subagency of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) - headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci - resumed funding a controversial grant to genetically modify bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, China without the approval of a government oversight body, according to the Daily Caller. This comes after a temporary suspension of federal funding in 2014 for gain-of-function research by which bat COVID was genetically manipulated to be more transmissible to humans. Four months prior to that decision, the NIH effectively shifted this research to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) via a grant to nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance, headed by Peter Daszak.
Unearthed by The National Pulse's Natalie Winters, a Nov. 2017 report titled (no really): "Bats in China carry all the ingredients to make a new SARS virus," describes how researchers at the WIV had identified 'all the genes to make a SARS coronavirus similar to the epidemic strain,' among 11 new strains of viruses collected in horseshoe bats.
“After five years of surveying bats in a cave in southern China’s Yunnan Province, Zhengli Shi and colleagues discovered 11 new strains of SARS-related viruses in horseshoe bats (especially in Rhinolophus sinicus). Within the strains, the researchers found all the genes to make a SARS coronavirus similar to the epidemic strain, says Shi, a virologist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
These new strains are more similar to the human version of SARS than were previously identified bat viruses, says Matthew Frieman, a virologist at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. -PLOS Pathogens
Also in 2017, a subagency of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) - headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci - resumed funding a controversial grant to genetically modify bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, China without the approval of a government oversight body, according to the Daily Caller. This comes after a temporary suspension of federal funding in 2014 for gain-of-function research by which bat COVID was genetically manipulated to be more transmissible to humans. Four months prior to that decision, the NIH effectively shifted this research to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) via a grant to nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance, headed by Peter Daszak.
