After years of rumours that the virus that causes COVID-19 escaped from a laboratory in China, the virologist at the centre of the claims has presented data on dozens of new coronaviruses collected from bats in southern China.
At a conference in Japan this week, Shi Zhengli, a specialist on bat coronaviruses, reported that none of the viruses stored in her freezers are the most recent ancestors of the virus SARS-CoV-2. Shi was leading coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), a high-level biosafety laboratory, when the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in that city. Soon afterwards, theories emerged that the virus had leaked — either by accident or deliberately — from the WIV.
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Source: Nature
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