The “Bat Woman” provides new evidence on the origin of the Coronavirus

A Chinese virologist famous for her research specializing in corona virus in bats, revealed new results indicating that the Corona virus, which spread around the world and caused the deaths of more than one million and 379 thousand people, did not originate in her laboratory located in Wuhan, China.

Shi Jingli, director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, known as “The Bat Woman” due to her numerous investigations related to this animal, re-analyzed blood samples taken in 2012 from 4 miners who contracted the disease after working in bat caves in southwest China. The results showed that none of them had contracted Covid-19, according to the “South China Morning Post.”

In the study published in the scientific journal Nature, Shi said his team recently retested samples taken from miners and was found to be free of SARS-Cove-2, contradicting the “conspiracy theories” surrounding Shi, who claim that their laboratory The origin of the virus that causes Covid-19.

The Chinese scientist explained in detail how she and her team studied the bat corona virus, known as RaTG13, in 2012, denying that it was the source of the emerging corona virus.

According to the new results, the viruses Shi and his team collected, either from animals or humans, prior to the Corona outbreak in Wuhan, central China, in late 2019, were not “SARS-Cove-2.”

Commenting on these theories, Xi said at the time that bats may be the primary host for “SARS-Cove-2,” without specifying the intermediate host between bats and humans.

In the latest update on this issue from Xi last week, the scientist said her team collected 13 samples from four miners who contracted a mysterious respiratory illness after they extracted bat feces at a copper mine in Yunnan province in April 2012.

Shi explained that his team collected samples from various animals near and within the aforementioned cave between 2012 and 2015, including bats, rats, and mosquitoes, as the RaTG13 bat virus was found in one of the samples, and the genome sequence of this sample was deposited in a special database in 2016.

She accused of trying to cover up the similarity of RaTG13 with “SARS-Cove-2”, and that she arrived at the truth that they are the same virus, which the scientist denied, noting that the name is based on the number of samples, the species of bats and the place from which they were taken.

“In 2020, we compared the SARS-Cove-2 sequence with our unpublished bat coronavirus sequences and found that it shares 96.2 percent identity with RaTG13,” Shi explained.

He continued: “The 3.8 percent difference in the genome means that it took decades for the bat coronavirus to mutate into SARS-Cove-2.”

Last July, the World Health Organization announced that two experts had arrived in China in order to lay the foundations for a broader mission to investigate the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Scientists believe the virus may have originated in bats and then transmitted via another mammal, such as a civet cat or scaly anteater, before being transmitted to humans at a fresh food market in Wuhan, central China. late last year.

More than 120 countries called for an investigation into the origin of the virus in May, while China insisted that the World Health Organization lead the investigation and wait until the epidemic is under control.

The last Coronavirus-related World Health Organization (WHO) mission to China was in February, and at the time the team leader, Canadian physician Bruce Aylward, praised China’s efforts to contain the outbreak and exchange information. , and Canadian and US officials criticized him, saying he was very lenient towards China.

The complaints included that China delayed the release of the genetic map of the virus for more than a week after three different government labs fully deciphered the information.