Revealed: Chinese scientist identified Covid-19 weeks before official disclosure

New Delhi: In a startling revelation, it has been uncovered that the genetic sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was discreetly uploaded by a Chinese researcher in Beijing to a US government website two weeks before its official public release. This finding, reported by The Wall Street Journal, has sparked a wave of inquiries and concerns regarding the transparency and response timing of China during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hidden in plain sight
Documents from the US Department of Health and Human Services, unveiled by a House committee, show that Dr Lili Ren of the Beijing-based Institute of Pathogen Biology uploaded a near-complete virus sequence to a US database on December 28, 2019. This was at a time when Chinese officials were still classifying the Wuhan outbreak as a "viral pneumonia of unknown cause." The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, a focal point of early infections, remained open. It wasn't until January 11, 2020, that China shared the virus's sequence with the World Health Organisation, leaving a critical two-week gap.

The official timeline claimed by Chinese government officials, saying the identification of a novel pneumonia in late December 2019 and its linkage to a new coronavirus by January 7 or 8, 2020, is now under scrutiny.

Republican members of Congress, led by Re Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Washington), expressed their outrage and skepticism towards the data provided by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Energy and Commerce Committee, including McMorris Rodgers, Brett Guthrie (R-Kentucky), and Morgan Griffith (R-Virginia), released a statement questioning the legitimacy of scientific theories based on the information provided by the CCP. The committee is actively seeking more information about the virus's origins and the US government's knowledge timeline.

A game of shadows
This new timeline doesn't solve the ongoing debate about whether the virus originated from an animal or a lab leak. However, it amplifies concerns about the completeness of information provided by China. Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, emphasised the significance of this discovery saying, "The delayed discovery of this submission underscores the importance of rapid data sharing during outbreaks. Immediate public release of the sequence could have significantly accelerated the development of COVID-19 vaccines, potentially saving thousands of lives weekly in the US alone." "It underscores how cautious we have to be about the accuracy of the information that the Chinese government has released," he added.

Implications and insights
The early knowledge of the virus sequence, according to experts, could have significantly influenced the global response to the outbreak. "Having the virus information two weeks earlier would have helped in the early stages of the outbreak," Richard Ebright, a microbiologist at Rutgers University, told the WSJ.

A continued quest for answers
While the existence of an accurate COVID virus sequence in a US database is now known, questions about the promptness and transparency of information sharing persist. The sequence's early submission date, corroborated by Dr Ren's previous writings on her research in Wuhan, adds another layer to the complex narrative of Cpvid-19's origins and early spread.