New Delhi: In what could be a stinging indictment of China in the origin and spread of novel Coronavirus, a latest study has pinned the blame entirely on Chinese scientists, calling the SARS-CoV-2 a ‘manufactured’ virus.
A new study published by British Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr. Birger Sørensen says that the novel Coronavirus was created by Chinese scientists in a lab and then reverse-engineered to give the impression that it evolved naturally from bats, DailyMail has reported.
British Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr Birger Sørensen wrote they’ve had primary evidence “of retro-engineering in China” since last year, but were ignored by academics and major medical journals.
The UK daily further reported that Dalgleish and Sørensen discovered ‘unique fingerprints’ in the virus while analysing Covid-19 samples in an attempt to create a vaccine.
Research ‘unravels’ the mystery
The new research claims that scientists took a natural coronavirus “backbone” found in Chinese cave bats and spliced onto it a new “spike”, turning it into the deadly and highly transmissible COVID-19.
In the 22-page paper which is set to be published in the scientific journal Quarterly Review of Biophysics Discovery, Dalgleish and Sorensen pieced together how Chinese scientists, some working with American universities, allegedly built the tools to create the coronavirus.
In the paper, the scientists wrote that a natural virus pandemic would be expected to mutate gradually and become infectious but less pathogenic, which did not happen in the case of Covid-19.
Dalgleish and Sorensen claimed that after the pandemic began, Chinese scientists took samples of the COVID-19 virus and “retro-engineered” it, making it appear as if it had evolved naturally.
The scientists also highlighted that Chinese scientists who wished to share their knowledge have not been able to do so or have disappeared.
Sorensen said that he believes the virus escaped from lower security areas of the institute, where he believes Gain of Function research was performed, reported DailyMail.com.
Dalgleish is a London oncology professor known for breakthrough work on a vaccine for HIV. Sørensen is a virologist and chair of the pharmaceutical company Immunor, which developed a coronavirus vaccine candidate called Biovacc-19.
3 researches at Wuhan lab fell ill, during virus origin in 2019
A few days ago, an article was published in the Wall Street Journal which revealed that three researchers at Wuhan Institute fell ill in November 2019 and had to be hospitalized. The report was based on previously undisclosed US intelligence. The researchers were admitted into the hospital a month before China reported the first case of COVID-19.
Before that, an Australian daily revealed that Chinese scientists were thinking about bioweapons, visualising a World War-III scenario. The Weekend Australian newspaper cited a Chinese government document that discussed the weaponisation of SARS coronavirus.
