Less likely the result of lab leak.

in covid •  2 years ago 

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https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nucleotide/MH615898.1
Virologist Eddie Holmes reminds that the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2018 shared various bat SARSr-CoVs it had sampled in a study on the origins of SARS-CoV-1. Notably there was no progenitor of SARS-COV-2 mentioned. This would be before the pandemic, so no reason to not share the progenitor if it was available.

RaTG13 was shared at the time. Before the discovery of the BANAL viruses in Laos, RaTG13 was the closest known relative of SARS-COV-2 sharing 96.1% nucleotide identity. Note this is actually a large evolutionary distance such that RaTG13 is not a progenitor of SARS-COV-2.

Importantly also WIV did not have a whole genome sequence of RaTG13.

Of course it doesn't necessarily rule out that a progenitor virus was subsequently collected, but we do have some idea what bat coronaviruses the lab had sampled up to 2018 and of these viruses none were the progenitor virus.

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