"The Wuhan lab…that conducted risky experiments on bat viruses…and almost certainly caused the pandemic has now revealed…it has done the same…risky experiments on another lot of horseshoe-bat viruses"
"If a military team made a mistake during a nuclear…exercise and accidentally obliterated millions…, you would not expect to find…the very same people merrily admitting a couple of years later…they…carried out the very same…exercise...with...fewer safeguards."
"Would you?"
"The Wuhan laboratory that conducted risky experiments on bat viruses at inadequate biosafety levels and almost certainly caused the pandemic has now revealed that it has done the same kind of risky experiments on another lot of horseshoe-bat viruses at low biosafety levels."
"[T]he creation of the HKUJ4r-HZAU-2020-MERS(S) chimera may violate Article I of the Biological Weapons
Convention. This is because it is hard to see protective or peaceful purposes arising from its development, a stipulate of Article I."
"NIAID grant R01AI110964, awarded to Dr Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance, funded the creation of pBAC-CMV and, with USAID PREDICT, sampling of isolate 152762 and generation of its RdRp sequence, thereby contributing directly to dangerous Gain of Function work."
"The handling of highly dangerous viruses is once again at the forefront of the biosecurity debate. In Spain, an investigation is currently underway to determine whether the outbreak of African swine fever could have originated in a laboratory. Separately, researchers in China recently reported the reappearance of a bird virus long thought to be extinct – a finding that is sparking discussion among virologists."
"Last week, the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture...launched an investigation to determine whether the virus might have escaped from a laboratory. The CReSA laboratory is a particular focus of the investigation. Genetic analyses...show that the virus does not resemble the variants currently circulating in other European countries, but rather a strain discovered in Georgia in 2007 and used in laboratories"
"Virologist Simon Wain-Hobson...points out that just a few weeks before the incident in November, nine scientists from the nearby IRTA-CReSA facility had published an experiment in which 20 pigs were inoculated with high doses of the very Georgia 2007 virus that is genetically similar to the pathogen found in wild boar."
"CReSA...has a 4,500-square-meter biocontainment unit with 6 laboratories at biosafety level 3...The CReSA expansion project, awarded to the construction company Rogasa, involves adding 3,000 square meters to the high-security laboratory area."
"Virologist Xavier Abad [head of the biocontainment unit at CReSA] issued a warning on social media on November 14: 'Accidents in laboratories that handle pathogens do happen'."
"Here, we report…emergence of…genotype IV NDV isolates…across…China between 2021 and 2023...These isolates exhibit remarkably high genetic similarity to ancestral strains, showing minimal divergence despite…50–90 years"
"Class II genotype IV Newcastle disease virus (NDV), a historically virulent strain responsible for the first Newcastle disease (ND) panzootic from the 1940s to 1960s, was presumed extinct after its last reported isolate in India in 2000."
"This study documents the emergence of genotype IV isolates...across China from 2021 to 2023, marking their return after more than two decades of presumed extinction."