Early ‘lab-grown’ COVID virus found in sample lends weight to Wuhan theory

Hungarian scientists claim that samples of Antarctic soil sent to a Shanghai firm in 2019 became contaminated with an unknown variant

An early version of Covid-19 that appears to have been grown in a laboratory has been discovered in samples from a Chinese biotechnology firm.

The finding lends weight to claims that the virus may have started life as a lab experiment that accidentally leaked out.

Bioinformatics experts from the University of Veterinary Medicine and Lorand University in Budapest, Hungary, made the discovery by accident while examining genetic data from soil samples collected from Antarctica in late 2018 and early 2019.

The samples were sent to Sangon Biotech in Shanghai for sequencing in Dec 2019, where they became contaminated with a previously unknown variant of Covid-19.

The variant has mutations that bridge the gap between bat coronavirus and the earliest Wuhan strain, so it may be an ancestral version of the virus.