Thread by @stephenehorn

1/ Did COVID-19 re-leak out of UNC labs over half-a-dozen times during the pandemic?

That's what two researchers believe they have found evidence of in seven anomalous genomes sequenced at a UNC Hospital lab in Chapel Hill between June 2020 and January 2021
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2/ Read the full article at @TriangleTrumpet, as well as the full interview w/ Drs. Steven Quay and Steve Massey (for supporters):
thisweekinthetriangle.com/p/unc-lab-leak…

3/ Although UNC's coronavirologist Dr. Ralph Baric has ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the gain of function research which potentially started the pandemic, the subject of this preprint is lab-acquired infections after COVID-19 was widespread
thisweekinthetriangle.com/i/162193385/un…

4/ The researchers identified the "cluster" of infections in Chapel Hill by searching a public database for "frozen genomes":

@quay_dr - "The concept is pretty simple: if you see a genome that has too few mutations compared to what's going on in the community, it is effectively frozen. It is appearing from a time in the past, it's jumping into the present. That's a hallmark of something that came out of a refrigerator, went into a patient, and then went into the community"

5/ @stevenemassey - "Given the high rate of RNA virus mutations, you don't expect these ancestral genomes to hang around for long. When you detect one of these genomes, it indicates that it's been essentially stored in a research facility and literally frozen in most cases..."

The technique has previously been used to identify lab leaks, including the H1N1 Russian flu pandemic in 1977

6/ The lack of mutations in these seven UNC sequences are anomalous both when compared against the expected number of mutations, as well as the number of mutations in sequences documented on the same day across the state

7/ Another anomalous fact is the ages of the infected individuals, with 5 out of 7 being between the ages of 21-26

8/ The paper presents a series of additional criteria for whether an infection is more likely lab-acquired or community-acquired, including investigation vs stonewalling by the research institution, as well as whether the infections match viruses being researched

9/ One such subject of research at UNC was the SARS-CoV-2 D614G mutation:

@quay_dr - "The viruses we were finding in the patients were exactly the viruses you would be studying in the laboratory if you're going to look at this very single change"

10/ The authors say they did not hear back directly from UNC about the evidence they found, only "indirectly" after UNC/CDC officials complained about the raw database sequences they published along with the preprint

11/ @stevenemassey - "There's a conflict of interest there because they're not incentivized to publicize any potential lab accidents...the key problem in biosafety issues when working with pathogens is the self-reporting"

12/ On the subject of transparency and oversight, @quay_dr also referenced the public records lawsuit against UNC by @USRightToKnow over documents potentially related to the origins of the pandemic (it's currently being appealed)

13/ The full paper is available here:
zenodo.org/records/151721…

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