There's no obvious reason to believe this is nefarious or even "mysterious". From the WaPo article[1] on the subject here's the statement from the NIH (which m

There's no obvious reason to believe this is nefarious or even "mysterious". From the WaPo article[1] on the subject here's the statement from the NIH (which maintains the database) “These SARS-CoV-2 sequences were submitted for posting in SRA in March 2020 and subsequently requested to be withdrawn by the submitting investigator in June 2020. The requestor indicated the sequence information had been updated, was being submitted to another database, and wanted the data removed from SRA to avoid version control issues" [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/coronavirus-origin-nih-gene-sequence-deletion/2021/06/23/186e87d0-d437-11eb-a53a-3b5450fdca7a_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/coronavirus-origin-nih...