Did China Close First Lab To Sequence Covid-19 Out Of Fear It Would Lose Bat Soup Narrative?
The question we all should be asking: Why was the first medical research lab, located in Shanghai, to sequence the whole genome of Covid-19 and publicly share the data shut down?
The Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center & School of Public Health at Fudan University was the first lab in the world to sequence the whole genome of the virus on Jan 11. Then, the Shanghai Health Commission, one day later, on Jan 12, shuttered the lab for “rectification.”
“The center was not given any specific reasons why the laboratory was closed for rectification. [We have submitted] four reports [asking for permission] to reopen, but we have not received any replies,” a source from the lab told the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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The source said it wasn’t clear if the closure of the Level 3 biosafety facility was a direct result of the lab publishing virus sequence data on virological.org, an open-access virus discussion forum, and GenBank, an open-access data repository.
The release of the genome data on the public domain allowed researchers to develop a new test kit to diagnose the virus. By Feb 3, the lab’s Professor Zhang Yongzhen, who was responsible for the sequencing, found his data published in Nature.
