3 ms·
Wuhan has a BSL-4 lab since 2018, but it wasn't used for coronavirus research. Most unversity cities have virology groups, and coronaviruses became a popular r
by fsh 2y ago
Wuhan has a BSL-4 lab since 2018, but it wasn't used for coronavirus research.
Most unversity cities have virology groups, and coronaviruses became a popular research subject after SARS, particularly in China. The probability of finding a coronavirus researcher group in any large Chinese city was probably fairly large in 2019.
- tripletao 2y agoThis greatly understates the WIV's uniqueness here. Lots of groups study coronaviruses, but the WIV had the biggest collection of novel SARS-related viruses in the world. The proximal host of SARS-1 was found soon after the first outbreaks, but its origin in bats wasn't known until Dr. Shi discovered it. The WIV had also proposed collaboration with UNC to engineer a virus structurally similar to SARS-CoV-2, a chimera of two novel sarbecoviruses with a human-designed FCS. This wasn't funded, but an unconfirmed leak claims the WIV continued this work alone: > The investigators spoke to two researchers working at a US laboratory who were collaborating with the Wuhan institute at the time of the outbreak. They said the Wuhan scientists had inserted furin cleavage sites into viruses in 2019 in exactly the way proposed in Daszak’s failed funding application to Darpa. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/article/inside-wuhan-lab-covid-pandemic-china-america-qhjwwwvm0 https://www.thetimes.com/uk/article/inside-wuhan-lab-covid-p...