All studies and associated conclusions regarding the origin of SARS-CoV-2 should be based on science, they argued.
China has consistently upheld the values of openness and transparency in its investigation into the origins of the novel coronavirus, claims a group of Chinese scientists in an article they published on Thursday.
Furthermore, China has been consistently exchanging pertinent data and working effectively with international researchers. They claim there is no solid evidence to back those claims and that it will take a lot of work to identify the origins of coronavirus. They urged scientists to continue approaching their work with a rational and scientific outlook.
The article was written in collaboration with scientists from a number of institutions, including the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, the Ruijin Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, and the School of Life Sciences at Peking University. It was released on China CDC Weekly, an academic website and national public health bulletin created by the CDC.
All studies and associated conclusions regarding the origin of SARS-CoV-2 should be based on science, they argued. The Chinese scientists have consistently upheld an open, transparent, and responsible attitude and practise, collaborated with scientists from around the globe on origin tracing, and provided a significant amount of scientific references.
Many cases were discovered to be connected to the Hunan seafood market in the city during the initial phase of the COVID-19 epidemic that hit Wuhan, Hubei Province, the hardest from late 2019 to early 2020. As a result, scientists from the China CDC and regional experts in disease control were sent to gather and examine samples from the environment and animals.
“The public was regularly updated on these results through the official media. The data were further analysed after the field surveillance work, and during the Global Study of Origins of SARS-CoV-2: China Part, which was organised by the WHO from July 2020 to February 2021, the findings were presented to WHO experts and thoroughly discussed by a joint expert team of the WHO and China.
Chinese researchers have also released their findings in a preprint study, summarising their analyses related to the seafood market. Additionally, the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID), a global database, received the study’s raw data.
“Since the deposit, the data have not been altered or deleted. According to standard publishing procedure and in accordance with an agreement between the journal and GISAID, the data would be made available concurrently with the official publication, but the link to access the data for journal review has always been available, “they claimed.
The market, they stressed, only served as “an early amplifier during the pandemic due to the high number of consumers every day, causing many initially identified infection clusters.”
According to the available information, “the origin of the virus involving animal-to-human transmission cannot be determined,” they declared. They claimed that the theories and judgements contained in the report issued by the WHO in March 2021 were factual and scientific.
They added that determining the virus’s origins is a scientific problem that calls for empirical data and deductive reasoning. It might take a while before the novel coronavirus’s origins are discovered.