CHINESE scientists experimented with a mutant Covid strain that has a 100 per cent “kill rate” in humanised mice.
The lethal virus attacked the brains of the mice that were engineered to have a similar genetic make-up to humans, according to the new study published this year.
AFPWorkers seen next to a cage with mice inside the a lab in Wuhan, China[/caption]
GettyThe deadly virus infected the lungs, bones, eyes, tracheas and brains of the dead mice[/caption]
All the mice that were infected with the virus – known as GX_P2V – died within eight days.
Researchers noted it was a “surprisingly” rapid death rate.
The virus infected the lungs, bones, eyes, tracheas and brains of the dead mice.
And the infection of the brain was strong enough to kill the human-like mice.
In the days before their deaths, the mice lost weight, had a hunched posture and moved sluggishly.
And their eyes turned completely white the day before they died, the researchers in Beijing said.
The study is the first of its kind to report a 100 per cent death rate in mice infected by the Covid-related virus.
Scientists said it “underscores a spillover risk of GX_P2V into humans”.
The virus was a mutated version of GX/2017 – a coronavirus-related pathogen that was reportedly discovered in Malaysian pangolins in 2017.
Francois Balloux, an epidemiology expert at UCL’s Genetics Institute, slammed the research as “reckless”.
“I can see nothing of vague interest that could be learned from force-infecting a weird breed of humanised mice with a random virus,” the professor said.
“Conversely, I could see how such stuff might go wrong.
“The preprint does not specify the bio-safety level and bio-safety precautions used for the research.
“The absence of this information raises the concerning possibility that part or all of this research, like the research in Wuhan in 2016-2019 that likely caused the Covid-19 pandemic, recklessly was performed without the minimal biosafety containment and practices essential for research with a potential pandemic pathogens.”
Dr Gennadi Glinsky, a retired professor of medicine at Stanford, said: “This madness must be stopped before too late.”
The study doesn’t appear to have any ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The Wuhan lab has been at the centre of the lab leak theory ever since Covid first emerged just a stone’s throw from the facility – which was known to be studying very similar bat viruses.
Many scientists and intelligence officials suspect bungling researchers at the lab accidentally spread Covid during risky experiments on bat coronaviruses.
Even the FBI and the US Department of Energy now believe Covid most likely leaked from a lab in China.
Documents previously uncovered by DRASTIC – a team of scientists and sleuths investigating Covid’s origins – revealed how US scientists applied for funding to create a Covid-like virus in China.
A year later, Covid-19 emerged in Wuhan and spread across the world, killing nearly seven million people.
Emails obtained by US Right to Know (USRTK) show how US scientists appeared to cover up their plan to carry out the high-risk coronavirus experiments in Wuhan with shoddy biosafety measures.
The Sun also revealed that US government health officials deliberately downplayed a lab leak as the most likely cause of the pandemic.
Former intelligence chief John Ratcliffe and top health department official Dr Robert Kadlec spoke out about the fact what was being said in public was not supported by their own intelligence.
Over the summer, reports suggested that US spies were probing whether Covid was created by a Chinese military scientist before it leaked from a Wuhan lab.
Zhou Yusen, who worked for the People’s Liberation Army, filed a patent for a Covid vaccine before the pandemic was declared – and mysteriously died just weeks later.
It followed a secret memo that revealed that China ordered scientists to destroy all early coronavirus samples from their labs just two days after the world was first told about Covid.
As the pandemic was starting to explode across the world, panicked Beijing ordered the labs to share their samples with the government – or destroy them “on the spot”, the leaked order shows.
The memo exposed the Chinese government’s far-reaching crackdown in the early days of the pandemic.
