(Joshua Paladino, Headline USA) Hungarian scientists found evidence that Chinese researchers had conducted experiments on a coronavirus strain similar to Sars-COV-2 prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, Summit News reported.
The Hungarians recently studied an Antartic soil sample that Sangon Biotech, a Shanghai-based research firm, first received in December 2019.
When the Hungarian researchers examined DNA from the soil sample, they discovered material that might be an early, unmodified version of COVID-19.
They also found genetic material from Chinese monkeys and hamsters, indicating that researchers might have experimented with the coronavirus on animals, according to the Daily Mail.
The findings suggest that Chinese scientists genetically modified the coronavirus, using gain-of-function techniques, until it became COVID-19.
Researchers at Eotvos Lorand University and the University of Veterinary Medicine warned, however, that the coronavirus could have polluted the soil sample without the knowledge of the Chinese scientists.
Sangon Biotech received the soil sample in the same month, December 2019, that the outbreak began.
Jesse Bloom, a professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle, also verified the findings from Budapest, but he admitted that the “ultimate implications remain unclear.”
Viscount Matt Ridley, who published Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19 last November, said “three key mutations” in the sample qualify it as a precursor to COVID-19.
The World Health Organization and the Chinese Communits Party claimed at the pandemic’s outset that the virus jumped from an animal to a human at a wet market in Wuhan.
Later evidence revealed that Chinese researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, using grants from the Anthony Fauci-directed NIAID, were conducting gain-of-function experiments on bat coronaviruses for years leading up to the COVID-19 outbreak.
