The Chinese virology researcher who warned a year ago of the emergence of a deadly new virus now says that the coronavirus is “just the tip of the iceberg” in terms of what humans could soon face without a global effort to prevent infectious outbreaks. Similar.
“If we want to prevent humans from suffering the next outbreak of infectious diseases, we must go ahead to learn about these unknown viruses carried by wild animals in the wild and warn them early,” said Shi Zhengli, a leading Chinese scientist specializing in the viral transmission of bats. , to China Central Television.
“If we don’t study the viruses, there may be another outbreak,” said Shi, whom the press called “Bat Woman” because of her research on mammals.
Shi Zhengli, a leading Chinese expert on bat coronavirus and deputy director of the P4 lab, was part of the team that published the first study suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 (the official name of the virus) came from bats. However, his findings prior to that feat were “silenced” by his own government.
Months ago, her country’s press nicknamed her “Bat Woman” because she managed to sequence the genes for the new coronavirus just three days after the existence of Covid-19 was known.
“If we don’t study viruses, there may be another outbreak.”
Shi and his team of researchers from the Wuhan Virology Laboratory warned of the possibility of outbreaks of SARS-like coronaviruses in China 11 months before the new coronavirus epidemic struck the city.
The harsh warning was part of an investigative document submitted by Shi and three co-authors in January 2019, nearly a year before the outbreak that is punishing the world today broke out. But they pressured them so that the information did not transcend.
The coronavirus has so far killed more than 345,000 people worldwide since it appears to have first emerged in Wuhan, China, late last year.
