A new batch of tests would have proven that the coronavirus that caused COVID-19 did not come from the Wuhan laboratory, its director said this week.
Shi Zhengli, the Chinese virologist known as the “batwoman,” published this week in the journal Nature an update of his research released in February regarding coronaviruses in mammals, the South China Morning Post.
The researchers carried out new tests on blood samples taken more than eight years ago from a group of minors who fell ill after being around bats, the media reported.
“We suspected that the patients had been infected with an unknown virus. Therefore, we have sampled animals, including bats, rats and musk shrews from the cave and its surroundings, ”it said in the update, according to the South China Morning Post.
The research findings demonstrated that the genetic characteristics of the viruses, which Shi Zhengli and his team were working on, were not at the root of the current pandemic.
The director had been at the center of several speculations claiming that COVID-19 had been conceived in her laboratory, during the leak of a natural bat virus.