(Fighting New Crown Pneumonia) Scientific research shows that New Crown virus is a natural product and Wuhan is not the source
China News Agency, Beijing, March 29th: Scientific research shows that the new crown virus is a natural product and Wuhan is not the source
China News Agency reporter Ma Jiajia Peng Dawei
Since the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia, the origin, spread and evolution of the new crown virus have attracted much attention. Recently, scientists from many countries have discovered that New Coronavirus is a natural product and has an earlier source than Wuhan. New Coronavirus may have multiple variants.
New crown virus is a natural product
On March 26th local time, Francis Collins, president of the National Institutes of Health, published a blog post entitled "Gene Research Shows New Coronary Pneumonia Virus Originating in Nature". The article cited U.S. scientists comparing publicly available genomic data of several coronaviruses, including the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19, and concluded that the virus is naturally occurring.
Collins emphasized that it is impossible for any bioengineer trying to build a coronavirus weapon to design a spike protein with a (strange) virus like SARS-CoV-2. He also emphasized that "the significance of this research is also to be able to distinguish rumors and facts with professional information and use this to gather the power of the world to cope with this global public health emergency".
Wuhan is not the source of the virus
The scientific journal "Natural Medicine" also recently released the latest research saying that New Coronavirus is a natural product and cannot be constructed in the laboratory. New Coronavirus has spread in the population before or in a relatively weakened form, and may even have existed for years. The virus triggers a pandemic only after mutation.
Robert Gary, a professor at Tulane University School of Medicine, said that the new crown virus is likely to be a recombinant virus, which combines the viruses of two animals and eventually infects humans. He also pointed out that the team and other studies have shown that "There must be some cases in Wuhan, but the South China Seafood Market in Wuhan is not the source of the virus, there is an earlier source."
As for the origin of the virus, Collins proposed two ideas in his blog post: The first idea is that as new coronaviruses continue to evolve in their natural hosts, which may be bats or pangolins, they infect human cells. The second idea is that the virus entered the human body before it acquired the ability to cause human disease. After years or even decades of gradual evolution, they eventually gain the ability to spread from person to person and can cause serious illness.
Virus or multiple variants
Regarding the origin of the virus, Icelandic researchers have recently traced that there may be multiple variants of the virus.
Carly Stefansson, the head of Iceland's Decod Gene Corporation, said in an interview recently that the company has so far sequenced about 40 virus variants found in Iceland's new crown virus test and found that there are One person was infected with both variants at the same time. He said the variants appeared to occur only in Iceland. The extreme variability of the virus also suggests that the virus may enter Iceland from many different countries, and that the source area is more numerous than previously thought.
Stefansson also noted that they traced back to where each variant of the virus came from. "Some variants come from Austria, one variant comes from people infected in Italy, and one variant appears to those infected in the UK."
Fast test results in 2.5 hours
German industrial giant Bosch Group recently announced that its newly developed fully automatic rapid detection solution can help medical institutions achieve rapid diagnosis of new crown virus. According to the Bosch Group, in the laboratory test, according to this scheme, it takes only two and a half hours to determine whether the patient is positive from the sample collection to the result presentation, and the accuracy rate is more than 95%.
Another advantage of this approach is that it allows testing to be performed at the point of care, which facilitates the immediate identification and isolation of infected persons.
"We hope this rapid detection program will effectively increase the speed at which infected people can be identified and isolated, thereby helping to contain the new crown virus pandemic," said Dr. Volkmar Dunner, Chairman of the Bosch Group Board of Directors.
It is reported that, in addition to the new coronavirus detection of the sample, the above rapid detection scheme can also test nine other respiratory diseases such as influenza A and B. The program is expected to be available in Germany starting in April, and subsequently launched in Europe and the rest of the world. (Finish)