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Coronavirus: Renowned Chinese scientist dubbed 'Bat Woman' warned of potential of COVID-19 pandemic
By 9News Staff
A Chinese scientist dubbed the 'Bat
Woman of Wuhan' warned the public of a virus outbreak from bats up to
15 years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr Shi Zenghli was the first to
identify the gene sequence for COVID-19, having years of experience
doing studies on viruses in bats and other animals.
In 2005, her research discovered that
bats are the natural carrier of SARS-like coronaviruses, and in 2015
she predicted the devastation of such animal-borne viruses could have
on humans in the modern world.
In the paper entitled 'A SARS-like
cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human
emergence' it was argued that SARS "heralded a new era in the
cross-species transmission of severe respiratory illness with
globalisation leading to rapid spread around the world and massive
economic impact".
"Although public health measures
were able to stop the SARS-CoV outbreak, recent metagenomics studies
have identified sequences of closely related SARS-like viruses
circulating in Chinese bat populations that may pose a future
threat,'' the paper she co-authored with 14 other scientists stated.
In a TED Talk around the same time
about viruses, she referenced her research in bat caves around Asia,
and said the proximity of some bat colonies to animal farms and human
settlements were causes for serious concern.
"Even though we have been looking for so many viruses for so
many years, SARS didn't come back,'' she said.
"But in fact, in nature, these
viruses similar to SARS.
"Actually it's still there.
"If we humans do not become
vigilant, the next time the virus gets infected, either directly or
through other animals. This possibility is entirely possible."
Recently Dr Shi has had to defend her
and her teams' research in China into bat-borne viruses at the Centre
for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
(WIV).
She is a key figure at the biosafety
level 4 lab located in Jiangxia District, Wuhan, and is in the middle
of international diplomatic tensions between the USA and China,
accused of being at the centre of a 'government cover-up' about her
findings into COVID-19.
Despite claims by conspiracy theorists
and US President Donald Trump of the coronavirus being leaked
accidentally or deliberately from a lab in Wuhan, numerous experts in
the field have disputed this.
Scientists found that 66 per cent of
the first cluster of 41 cases in Wuhan in December were linked to a
wet market in the city.
In addition
to this, the genetic sequencing proved that the new SARS-CoV-2
coronavirus did not match viruses sampled at the WIV.
Coronavirus: China’s diplomatic
aggression on Australia
President of EcoHealth Alliance Peter
Daszak called conspiracy theories like a lab leak of the virus as
"preposterous".
"If you do the math on this, it's
very straightforward. We have hundreds of millions of bats in
Southeast Asia and about 10 per cent of bats in some colonies have
viruses at any one time. So that's hundreds of thousands of bats
every night with viruses," the disease ecologist told Vox.
"We also find tens of thousands of
people in the wildlife trade, hunting and killing wildlife in China
and Southeast Asia, and millions of people living in rural
populations in Southeast Asia near bat caves.
"We went out and surveyed a
population in Yunnan, China - we'd been to bat caves and found
viruses that we thought could be high risk. So we sample people
nearby, and 3 per cent had antibodies to those viruses.
"So between the last two and three
years, those people were exposed to bat coronaviruses. If you
extrapolate that population across the whole of Southeast Asia, it's
1 million to 7 million people a year getting infected by bat viruses.
So let's compare 1 million to 7 million people a year to half a dozen people; it's just not logical."
