CGTN Exclusive: The story of COVID-19 in the words of Wuhan lab expert

Editor's note: The Wuhan Institute of Virology has been in the eye of the storm since the novel coronavirus disease, later known as COVID-19, engulfed the world. Leaving almost nowhere untouched, the virus of unknown etiology has so far infected over 5 million people globally, with a death toll exceeding 338,000. It has forced shutdowns worldwide, crippling economies and upending lives overnight.

Since the first known cases were reported last December, scientists have raced to find the origins of the virus in the hope of developing a vaccine. In the meantime, a blame game is going on, with conspiracy theories ranging from the virus "leaking" from the Wuhan Institute of Virology to China "concealing" crucial information, despite repeated claims from scientists that it originated from nature.

CGTN spoke to three top epidemiologists from the institute to get their take on these rumors, how they view the outbreak and progress on cooperating with their international counterparts. The following interview with Shi Zhengli (Shi), a virologist and researcher at the institute, is the second in this series. You can read the first story here.

CGTN: Per reports, it was on December 30, 2019 that your team first obtained samples of the novel coronavirus. What have you done since then for identifying the pathogen?

Shi: We obtained samples on the afternoon of December 30, 2019, and our team first carried out coronavirus studies on the samples, which were thought to be from an unexplained case of pneumonia, since my laboratory has long been researching on coronaviruses. Meanwhile, we performed high-throughput sequencing of the samples and the isolation of pathogens. And then in a very short time, we identified that this was a new type of coronavirus in these samples. We obtained its whole genome sequence. It showed that the pathogen's sequence was not the same as the already existing viruses. So we named it a novel coronavirus. We, along with two other medical institutes in our country, submitted this genome sequence to the World Health Organization on January 12, 2020. At the same time, we also uploaded other sequences to a gene library called GISAID for governments and scientists around the world to identify pathogens and develop vaccines and screen drugs.

Click here for more.