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Beijing: There are three strains of
live coronaviruses in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but none matches the
virus that causes COVID-19, according to the director of the institute. In an
interview to state broadcaster CGTN aired on Saturday night, Wang Yanyi said
that any suggestion that the SARS-CoV-2 leaked from her institute is "pure
fabrication".
After the COVID-19 outbreak started in Wuhan late last year and eventually became a global pandemic, the biosafety laboratory in China's Hubei province has been in the eye of a storm as conspiracy theories suggesting the virus could have leaked from the lab started gaining traction. Those were later even picked by US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
However, Wang stressed that the "current consensus of the international academic community is that the virus originated from wild animals."
She also underlined the need for global cooperation to find answers to questions such as where the viruses that are highly similar to SARS-CoV-2 are. "Now we have three strains of live viruses. One of them has the highest similarity, 96 per cent to the SARS virus. But their highest similarity to SARS-CoV-2 only reaches 79.8 per cent," Wang told the broadcaster. (IANS)
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