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Who made the Virus? Another view.
French
coronavirus strain may be local and may not have come from China
The Covid-19 virus which has
been ravaging France may not have originated in China, according to a study
published by virologists at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. The French strain
may have been circulating locally and unrecognised before the global outbreak
accelerated.
Tests on samples from 97 French and three
Algerians infected with Sars-CoV-2 suggest that the virus may have been
around in France before the pandemic started.
The sixteen-page study, by
researchers affiliated with the prestigious Pasteur Institute in Paris,
was first reported by Hong Kong’s South China Morning
Post, and says that already on 10 January, France implemented
“strengthened surveillance of Covid-19 cases,” five days after the World Health
Organisation issued the first “Disease Outbreak News” on
a “pneumonia of unknown cause” which was first reported by China on 31 December
2019.
Genetic
analysis of the samples revealed that the dominant types of viral strains in
France belonged to a “clade” or group with a common ancestor that did not come
from either China or Italy.
“The
French outbreak has been mainly seeded by one or several variants of this clade
… we can infer that the virus was silently circulating in France in February,”
write the researchers.
The earliest sample in the French clade
was collected on 19 February from a patient who had no history of travel and
no known contact with returned travelers.
The
scenario “is compatible with the large proportion of mild or asymptomatic
diseases,” in France, say the researchers.
However,
“current sampling clearly prevents reliable inference for the timing of
introduction in France,” making it impossible to go one step further and
conclude that the virus existed in France even before it was discovered in
China.
If this were to be established it would have huge implications,
and may feed into the propaganda war between China and
the US.
Currently,
China maintains that the “origin of the virus is unknown” while the US insists
on the Chinese origins of the disease to such a point that it wants
to sue Beijing for economic damage caused by the virus and lockdown measures
aimed at stemming it.
