On Tuesday, scientists in Australia gave new hope to a world fearful of the deadly coronavirus, as they announced they had recreated the virus, which may expedite the process in developing a vaccine.
As ABC News Australia reported, the scientists at Melbourne’s Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity intended to share their discovery with the World Health Organization (WHO) in Europe, from where it will be sent to labs worldwide in order to speedily develop a vaccine.
The virus was grown from cells gleaned from a patient who was infected last Friday. Dr. Mike Catton, the co-deputy director of the Doherty Institute, exulted, “We got it. Fantastic.” He asserted that the virus could also be used to detect if someone was already infected before they displayed any symptoms.
Doherty Institute lead scientist Julian Druce said, “This will be a game changer for other labs within Australia.” He added, “It’s been 10-12 hour days, 2:00am finishes; so it’s been pretty full on. We’ve designed and planned for an exercise like this for many years. This is what the Doherty Institute was built for. And that’s really why we’re able to get an answer from Friday to today [of] diagnosis, detection, sequencing, and isolation.”
A lab in China had also recreated the virus, but would not share it with the WHO. ABC News noted, “However,the same lab released images of the genetic sequence of the disease, which helped scientists at the Doherty Institute recreate it.”
The Daily Wire reported on Tuesday, “ … the Chinese government, it now seems, is working against the tide, spreading misinformation of their own to convince foreign governments and world health officials that they’re efficiently handling the outbreak. The Daily Beast reports that Chinese state media is tweeting photos of roadblocks, checkpoints, and even a hastily constructed hospital to show it’s ‘on top of things.’”
Catton stated, “This virus qualifies as a three out of four, so it’s a level three virus and that’s based off our understanding of SARS (sudden acute respiratory syndrome) and MERS (Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome), which are its close cousins. It’s dangerous, it does kill some people, but it hasn’t got the lethality that viruses like Ebola do.”
He continued, “I’d still say we’re alert but not alarmed. We shared the view of national health authorities that it was likely there would be cases in Australia. That didn’t happen with SARS, which is a similar virus. I think it’s something like 150 million visits more each year with China to countries like Australia than was true back then.”
Catton concluded, “SARS we know had a death rate — a mortality rate — of about 10 per cent. This [coronavirus] appears to be 3 per cent; my personal opinion is it will turn out to be lower than that.”
The Daily Wire reported on Tuesday, “The World Health Organization (WHO) has admitted it made an error last week when it classified the global risk of China’s new coronavirus — which can lead to SARS — as ‘moderate.’ The organization on Monday released a new report late Sunday that stated the risk was actually ‘very high in China, high at the regional level and high at the global level.’”