Wuhan Virus Director Responds to Conspiracy Theories: We only came into contact with the New Crown Virus on December 30 (video interview with text)

Is the rumor that the new crown virus leaked from Wuhan virus true? What does the new coronavirus have to do with the virus mentioned in a 2018 paper published in the journal Nature? Is there a live virus in Wuhan virus? Wang Yanxuan, director of the Wuhan Virus Institute, answered one by one in an interviewCGTN reporter Hu Chao (hereinafter referred to as CGTN): Since the outbreak, there has been a voice and the outside world, think that the new crown virus from our Wuhan virus leaked, only triggered this global epidemic such an outbreakWhat do you think of this problem? Wang Yanxuan, director of the Wuhan Virus Institute,: "This statement is completely unfoundedBecause the Wuhan virus was first exposed to (new coronavirus) on December 30 last year, when it was still called an unexplained pneumonia clinical samples, and later after this pathogen testwork, we found that these samples contain a previously completely unknown new coronavirus, which we now call the new coronavirusWe have never been exposed to, studied, or preserved beforeIn fact, like everyone else, we didn't know the virus existedSo you don't have anything, how do you leak it?CGTN: But we also read an article in the April 2018 issue of Nature about the discovery of a new coronavirus from bats, a new coronavirus from bats that is in our institute, did it trigger the outbreak?Wang Yanxuan: In fact, many coronaviruses were found in the original known as the new coronavirus, such as the earlier MERS MERS virus, and you mentioned 18 years of this paper, including our new crown in 2019, in fact, when first discovered by people called the new coronavirus, may easily cause this confusionBut in fact, the 18-year-old paper in the virus is not the virus we caused the new crown outbreak this time, that virus it mainly caused piglets diarrhea and death, so later we named it SADS, the virus and the new crown of its genome similarity is only 50%, so it can be said that the difference is very hugeCGTN: But in February this year, we published another article in the journal Nature that suggested that we had discovered a new coronavirus of bats, which was 96.2% similar to this new coronavirusWang Yanxuan: The coronavirus of the bat that you mentioned has a name for the bat with 96.2% similarity to the genome of the new coronavirus has a name called RaTG-13The similarity may be very high in the eyes of the general population, but the coronavirus is actually one of the largest RNA viruses in the genomeso take the new crown virus for example, it has about 30,000 bases in the whole genome, 3.8% of the difference, in fact, the corresponding is more than 1100 sites of this differenceIn nature, a virus that accumulates through natural evolution to such a number of mutations actually takes a long process and recently we noticed that one of the leading scholars on global virus evolution, Edward Holmes, has issued a statement that RaTG-13 will take about 50 years in nature before it can evolve to a new crown And you think is more than 1100 sites of different numbers itself is very large, and then these sites also just have to correspond to the corresponding site of the new crown virus, just good is these 1100 sites mutation, and just good into the appearance of the new crown virus, so the probability inside can be said to be very small many people may have a misunderstanding that since the Wuhan virus reported the similarity of RaTG-13 and the new crown virus genome, then you have the virus in Wuhan virus, but it is not We only knew the sequence information of the RaTG-13 virus during the sequencing of the bat samples, but we did not isolate and obtain the RaTG-13 live virus, so there is no such possibility of leaking RaTG13 CGTN: You just mentioned that this new coronavirus we do not have, you mentioned that RaTG13 this live virus is not, we have been committed to the study of coronavirus, in our virus library head no live virus? What kind of virus library is this? Wang Yanxuan: Like some of the research teams of Wuhan Virus Institute you just mentioned, such as Mr Shi Zhengli's team, they have been working on the research on bat (SARS-like) coronavirus since 2004, but their research is all about the subject of SARS traceability In their research, they paid more attention to, more in-depth study, and more likely to isolate the acquired, are similar to SARS, the bat coronavirus we know this time the new crown, in fact, it and SARS genome-wide similarity is only 80%, it can be said that there is still a more obvious difference So in The Course of Mr Shi's previous studies, there was no concern about this virus, which is relatively similar to SARS, which is why they didn't try to isolate the RaTG13, (and SARS) genome smaller than 79 percent in the first set over the years, in fact, Shi teacher they did separate some of the bat's coronavirus, should we currently have a total of three strains But the three strains had the highest similarity to SARS at 96%, but none of the viruses had the highest similarity to 79.8% CGTN: Because our virus has been committed to the study of coronavirus for a long time, since SARS, we can say that we go deep into many places to find this virus, then we this new coronavirus outbreak, such a new virus, we have done what work? Wang Yanxuan: What is the source of this virus in the international academic community, the current consensus is that it should be from the nature of a certain kind of wildlife, but at present we are around the world on the wide variety of these wild animals, what kind of virus? Where exactly exists viruses that are more similar to new crowns? There is no clear answer, which is why this question needs to be answered by scientists from around the world So the question of traceability is, in the final analysis, a scientific one, which requires scientists to make judgments based on scientific data and facts Source: China International Television