Wuhan Institute of Virology director speaks out on virus possible origins
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Claims promoted by US President Donald Trump that the global coronavirus pandemic originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the central Chinese city are “pure fabrication,” the institute’s director said.
Wang Yanyi was quoted by state media Sunday as saying the institute did not have “any knowledge before that nor had we ever met, researched or kept the virus. We didn’t even know about the existence of the virus, so how could it be leaked from our lab when we didn’t have it?”
Wang said the institute now has three live strains of bat coronavirus on-site, but none match the new contagion wreaking chaos across the world.
“This is pure fabrication. Our institute first received the clinical sample of the unknown pneumonia on December 30 last year. After we checked the pathogen within the sample, we found it contained a new coronavirus, which is now called SARS-CoV-2. We didn’t have any knowledge before that, nor had we ever encountered, researched or kept the virus. In fact, like everyone else, we didn’t even know the virus existed. How could it have leaked from our lab when we never had it?”, she said.
Questioned about the origins and links to the ‘bat’, Wang said that the bat coronavirus has a 96.2 percent genomic similarity to SARS-CoV-2 and is called RaTG-13.
“From the perspective of many non-professionals, the similarity rate of 96.2 percent is a very high number. But coronavirus is one of the RNA viruses that have the largest genomes. Take the SARS-CoV-2 for example. Its entire genome contains about 30,000 bases. The difference of a percentage of 3.8 means the difference of over 1,100 nucleotide positions. In the natural world, it takes a long period of time for a virus to naturally evolve and mutate to become SARS-CoV-2.”
She told Chines state media “Recently we’ve noticed a statement made by Edward Holmes, a world-leading virologist who studies the evolution of viruses. He believes it would take about 50 years for RaTG-13 to naturally evolve to SARS-CoV-2. The difference of over 1,100 positions is huge. And they should respectively match the corresponding nucleotide positions in the genome of SARS-CoV-2, which means it requires more than 1,100 mutations in these exact positions become SARS-CoV-2. Thus, the probability is very low. Many people might misunderstand that since our institute reported the RaTG-13’s genomic similarity to SARS-CoV-2, we must have the RaTG-13 virus in our lab. In fact, that’s not the case. When we were sequencing the genes of this bat virus sample, we got the genome sequence of the RaTG-13 but we didn’t isolate nor obtain the live virus of RaTG-13. Thus, there is no possibility of us leaking RaTG-13.”
