Chinese scientists studying a new mutated strain of COVID-19 with a 100% fatality rate in "humanized mice" are being warned against further research due to "spillover risk" to humans.
In a study shared last week, the scientists said they cloned a COVID-like virus found in pangolins and used it to infect mice. They noted that the deadly virus, known as GX_P2V, attacked the brains of mice engineered to reflect genetic makeup similar to humans, GB News reported.
The study said that every rodent infected with the pathogen died within eight days, which the researchers described as a "surprisingly" rapid death rate.
Spillover Risk of Deadly Virus GX_P2V into Humans
The rodents reportedly experienced rapid weight loss days, exhibited a hunched posture, and moved very sluggishly days before their deaths.
The New York Post reported that the GX_P2V had infected the dead mice's lungs, bones, tracheas, eyes, and brains. The scientists were surprised to find high levels of viral load in the mice's eyes and brains, which ultimately caused the death of the animals.
This scenario suggests the deadly virus multiplies and uniquely spreads through the body. The study also discovered that the animals' eyes turned completely white the day before they died.
In their scientific paper, the researchers wrote that the study is the first to report a 100% mortality rate in mice infected by the COVID-19-related virus. They further noted that the infection could "spillover" to humans.
"This underscores a spillover risk of GX_P2V into humans and provides a unique model for understanding the pathogenic mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2-related viruses," researchers said.
GX_P2V is reportedly a mutated version of GX/2017, a coronavirus cousin discovered in Malaysian pangolins in 2017 or three years before the COVID pandemic.
Chinese Researchers Told to Stop New Tests on Deadly Virus Immediately
Several scientists have called for the halt of the experiments on the deadly virus due to the spillover risk to humans. Dr. Gennadi Glinsky, a retired Stanford professor of medicine, wrote on X: "This madness must be stopped before [it is] too late." Other scientists slammed the study, saying it's "terrible" and "pointless."
"It's a terrible study, scientifically totally pointless... I can see nothing of vague interest that could be learned from force-infecting a weird breed of humanized mice with a random virus. Conversely, I could see how such stuff might go wrong," Francois Balloux, an infectious disease expert at University College London, also said in an X post.
"The preprint does not specify the biosafety level and biosafety 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 potential pandemic pathogens," he added.
Richard H. Ebright, a Rutgers University chemistry and chemical biology professor, said "concur" as he agreed with Balloux's concerns. While it is still unclear how the strain will impact humans, the study does not appear to have any link to China's Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was the center of lab leak theories regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.
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