Covid, Palù: “New clues that the virus has escaped from the laboratory”

New clues that the Covid pandemic was triggered by a laboratory accident. This was stated by Giorgio Palù, where in an interview with Corriere della Ser, he argues that “the spillover with an animal-human species jump could have been carried out for accidental causes by a bat virus experimentally adapted to grow in vitro”. According to the president of the Italian Medicines Agency, “a data is suggestive, which will in any case be confirmed by further verifications by other researchers. The Wuhan prototype strain, the one that began to manifest itself in China with severe forms of pneumonia, and all the variants that derivatives, even those considered uninteresting in the international classification, have a very peculiar characteristic. In the gene that produces the Spike protein (the one that the virus uses to attach the cell to be infected) a sequence of 19 letters belonging to a human gene appears inserted and absent from all the genomes of the human, animal, bacterial and plant viruses sequenced up to now. n random event is approximately one in a trillion. An essential sequence because it gives the virus the ability to fuse with human cells and to cause disease “. “We can hypothesize a manipulation carried out for research purposes only – explains the virologist – certainly not with malicious intentions. It would not be the first time that a virus has accidentally escaped from a high-security laboratory ”. As for the hypothesis of the origin of the virus from the bat with a direct passage to man or indirect through an intermediate host (we have spoken of the pangolin) or a series of successive man-animal-man exchanges, “some recent studies, which use bioinformatics to investigate the evolution of the virus would orient us in this direction. However, the queen proof that supports the natural origin is missing. On the one hand, the intermediate host has not yet been found and on the other, RaTG13, the Bat virus Rhinolophus affinis whose genome is 97% identical to Sars-CoV-2, has little ability to infect us. To validate which of the hypotheses in the field (natural or laboratory spillover) is more likely, the collaboration of the Chinese authorities would be desirable, as repeatedly requested by the WHO and the scientific community “. “By identifying a possible intermediate host – continues Palù – it would be possible to trace the initial source of the infection and block the epidemic transmission, as has happened for other viruses from the animal world. It is not possible to predict what will happen in a few months. the prospect seems favorable if we consider the trend of these days and the approach of the summer that hinders the transmission of all airborne viruses. Regarding adherence to the Novavax vaccine, I believe that the no vax range that irreducibly opposes vaccinations (a small minority, fortunately) will never accept any vaccine. The big advantage of Novavax, in addition to the proven efficacy and safety, is another. It can be stored for months at refrigerator temperatures, 3-4 degrees and at room temperature, a condition that will facilitate its use in the populations of the world who do not have a cold chain available and need to be and immunize if we want the end of the pandemic ”.