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| The director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology told a Chinese state broadcaster that the lab has three live strains of bat coronavirus on-site, but that claims the coronavirus could have leaked from the facility were 'pure fabrication' (AFP Photo/ Hector RETAMAL) |
The Chinese virology institute at the centre of US allegations it may have been the source of the COVID-19 pandemic has three live strains of bat coronavirus on-site, but none match the new global contagion, its director has said.
Scientists
think COVID-19 -- which first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan and
has killed more than 340,000 people worldwide -- originated in bats and could
have been transmitted to people via another mammal.
But the
director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology told state broadcaster CGTN that
claims made by US President Donald Trump and others the virus could have leaked
from the facility were "pure fabrication".
In the
interview filmed on May 13 but broadcast Saturday night, Wang Yanyi said the
centre has "isolated and obtained some coronaviruses from bats".
"Now
we have three strains of live viruses... But their highest similarity to
SARS-CoV-2 only reaches 79.8 percent," she said, referring to the
coronavirus strain that causes COVID-19.
One of
their research teams, led by Professor Shi Zhengli, has been researching bat
coronaviruses since 2004 and focused on the "source tracing of SARS",
the strain behind another virus outbreak nearly two decades ago.
"We
know that the whole genome of SARS-CoV-2 is only 80 percent similar to that of
SARS. It's an obvious difference," she said.
"So,
in Professor Shi's past research, they didn't pay attention to such viruses
which are less similar to the SARS virus."
Plans for
more labs
Conspiracy
rumours that the biosafety lab was involved in the outbreak swirled online for
months before Trump and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo brought the theory
into the mainstream by claiming that there is evidence the pathogen came from the
institute.
The United
States and Australia have called in recent weeks for an investigation into the
origins of the pandemic.
Chinese
scientists have said that the virus first emerged at a market selling live
animals in Wuhan, though officials in Beijing more recently cast doubt about
its origins.
Chinese
Foreign minister Wang Yi on Sunday blasted what he called efforts by US
politicians to "fabricate rumours" about the pathogen's origins and
"stigmatise China".
He said
China would be "open" to international cooperation to identify the
source of the novel coronavirus, as long as any investigation is "free of
political interference".
The World
Health Organization has said Washington offered no evidence to support the
"speculative" claims about the Wuhan lab.
The Wuhan
lab has said it received samples of the then-unknown virus on December 30,
determined the viral genome sequence on January 2 and submitted information on
the pathogen to the WHO on January 11.
Wang Yanyi
said in the interview that before it received samples in December, their team
had never "encountered, researched or kept the virus".
"In
fact, like everyone else, we didn't even know the virus existed," she
said. "How could it have leaked from our lab when we never had it?"
At a press
conference Sunday, Zhao Chenxin, deputy secretary-general of the National
Development and Reform Commission, said every Chinese prefecture must have its
own P3 laboratory to ramp up preparations against infectious diseases.
Apart from
the P3 lab plans -- the second-highest biosafety classification for labs
handling pathogens -- Zhao said each city should also have a lower-level P2
laboratory so they could "quickly respond in a major epidemic".
The Wuhan
institute has both P3 and P4 labs.
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