Chinese Researcher Submitted COVID Virus Sequence 2 Weeks Before China Made Data Public – Voice of America – VOA News

A Chinese researcher uploaded a genome sequence of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 to a U.S. government database two weeks before the Chinese government shared the virus sequence with the world, according to documents made public Wednesday by a U.S. congressional committee.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health said in response to a House Energy and Commerce Committee investigation that Chinese virologist Lili Ren submitted the sequence on December 28, 2019, but that the data was incomplete and "lacked the necessary information required for publication."

An NIH letter to the committee said data submitted to GenBank, a collection of publicly available DNA sequences, has to undergo a review before being published to ensure it meets standards for researchers to be able to use "trusted and reliable data."

NIH instructed Ren to submit the requested update, warning that if the data was not provided by January 14, 2020, the sequence submission would be rejected and deleted.

Ren did not respond to the NIH request, and the data was removed on January 16, 2020.

NIH said on January 12, 2020, a different entity submitted a "nearly identical" sequence for SARS-CoV-2, which was published and made available to the public.

Researchers had said that the extra two weeks could have given international health bodies a head start on figuring out how the disease spread and possible vaccines.

"This significant discovery further underscores why we cannot trust any of the so-called facts or data provided by the CCP and calls into serious question the legitimacy of any scientific theories based on such information," Representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Brett Guthrie and Morgan Griffith said in a statement.

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Chinese Researcher Submitted COVID Virus Sequence 2 Weeks Before China Made Data Public - Voice of America - VOA News