The government of China and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is indicated as one of the places where the coronavirus, hampered the delivery of samples of the new pathogen SARS-CoV-2 to US scientists, according to a new leak published in Asian newspapers. This refusal caused a delay in preventive measures against the virus, according to the Hong Kong newspaper. South China Morning Post, based on a series of emails to which he had access.
The government of Xi Jinping was accused from the beginning of the pandemic of hiding information about covid-19 and of chase and try silence the first alert launchers about the new virus that emerged in Wuhan in late 2019.
The first contacts between the Galveston National Laboratory and the Wuhan Institute of Virology
The emails that the SCMP were exchanged at the end of January 2020 between scientists from the Galveston National Laboratory in Texas and scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, who had helped train.
American scientists asked to run a fast “Material transfer agreement” to obtain samples of the coronavirus in their laboratories. But the days passed and no answer came from the Chinese side. According to the newspaper, the exchange of information seemed hampered by the need to obtain approval from the Chinese government.
The emails are yet another proof of China’s reluctance to share the material in the critical early days of the pandemic. “For Texas investigators, the delay was a serious waste of time,” said the SCMP.
James Le Duc, then director of the Texas laboratory, warned his Chinese counterparts that the delays could damage China’s international position and depriving scientists of material for their own research.
“You are in a very challenging position and you are doing a great job. However, I would recommend that you quickly organize and implement a way to share isolates from [virus] reference, ”he wrote in a Jan. 22 email to Yuan Zhiming, director of the National Biosafety Laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“With cases occurring outside of China, others will soon have their own samples and China will have lost the opportunity for leadership“, wrote.
“And if scientific publications by Chinese researchers start to appear without the world having independent access to a strain, China is likely to be heavily criticized.”
Delays in sharing virus sequencing and closing a laboratory
Chinese scientists shared the virus genome sequence– a code denoting its genetic components – less than two weeks after Wuhan health authorities sounded the alarm about a suspicious outbreak.
However, the Shanghai scientist who first published the independent government sequence on January 11 saw how authorities closed their laboratory for “rectification”. Chinese officials shared the genome with the World Health Organization (WHO) the next day, 10 days after WIV first sequenced it on January 2, according to later reports.
The SARS-CoV-2 genome sequence, uploaded online, gave laboratories around the world the ability to create diagnostic kits and even begin developing vaccines.
The chronology of the mails sent by the Gavelston National Laboratory
The emails show that Texas scientists sent official documents requesting that a sample be shipped from Wuhan on January 28. As he was able to reconstruct the SCMP, the order from the Texan laboratory went first through the Wuhan customs office to the General Administration of Customs in Beijing and, ultimately, to the General Office of the State Council, according to the messages sent by the scientist Deng Fei, from the WIV Center for Bioinformation and Virus Resources.
The February 2nd, Texas molecular biology professor Pei-Yong Shi sent an urgent message: “Any update on the sample submission? Since this is a public health emergency, I hope that the approval will be processed urgently. The exchange of samples will definitely speed up the development of countermeasures, ”he wrote to Deng, who replied that he was doing a daily follow-up with customs officials in Beijing.
“I hope I can progress “Deng replied.
When the Texas lab finally got a sample
Likewise, Shi Zhengli, the director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, who has been at the center of suspicion due to her work on bat coronaviruses, had also planned to share samples of the virus with the laboratory. Galveston, something that was eventually prevented by the Beijing government, according to the magazine Vanity Fair.
In the end, the Texas lab received a sample on February 11. But did not come from China. It was provided to them by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which by then had succeeded in culturing samples of the virus from a local patient. The pandemic had already started.
Disclaimer: This article is generated from the feed and not edited by our team.
