‘Madness’: Scientists in China experimenting with mutant Covid strain

In a Wuhan-esque study, Chinese scientists are experimenting with a mutant Covid strain that is 100 per cent lethal to “humanised” mice.

In a Wuhan-esque study, Chinese scientists are experimenting with a mutant Covid strain that is 100 per cent lethal to “humanised” mice.

The deadly virus — known as GX_P2V — attacked the brains of mice that were engineered to reflect genetic makeup similar to people, according to a study shared last week out of Beijing.

Chinese scientists have been experimenting with a mutant Covid strain. Picture: Getty Images

“This underscores a spillover risk of GX_P2V into humans and provides a unique model for understanding the pathogenic mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2-related viruses,” the authors wrote.

According to the New York Post, the deadly virus is a mutated version of GX/2017, a coronavirus cousin that was reportedly discovered in Malaysian pangolins in 2017 — three years before the pandemic. Pangolins, also called scaly anteaters, are mammals found in warm areas of the planet.

All the mice that were infected with the virus died within just eight days, which researchers noted was a “surprisingly” rapid death rate.

Scientists said the strain had a 100 per cent death rate in mice. Picture: AFP

GX_P2V had infected the lungs, bones, eyes, tracheas and brains of the dead mice, the last of which was severe enough to ultimately cause the death of the animals.

In the days before their deaths, the mice had quickly lost weight, exhibited a hunched posture, and moved extremely sluggishly.

Most eerie of all, their eyes turned completely white the day before they died.

Although terrifying, the study is the first of its kind to report a 100 per cent mortality rate in mice infected by the Covid-related virus — far surpassing previously reported results from another study, the researchers wrote.

Global experts have slammed the research as “pointless” and “terrible”. Picture: AFP

More importantly, the results of the study do not indicate how it would affect human beings.

Francois Balloux, an epidemiology expert at University College London’s Genetics Institute, slammed the research as “terrible” and “scientifically totally pointless.”

“I can see nothing of vague interest that could be learned from force-infecting a weird breed of humanised mice with a random virus. Conversely, I could see how much stuff might go wrong,” the professor wrote on X.

“The preprint does not specify the biosafety level and biosafety precautions used for the research,” he continued.

“The absence of this information raises the concerning possibility that part or all of this research, like the research in Wuhan in 2016-2019 that likely caused the Covid pandemic, recklessly was performed without the minimal biosafety containment and practices essential for research with potential pandemic pathogens.”

Rutgers University professor of chemistry and chemical biology Richard H Ebright backed up Balloux’s concerns in a word: “concur.”

Dr Gennadi Glinsky, a retired professor of medicine at Stanford, wrote: “This madness must be stopped before too late.”

The 2024 study does not appear to have any ties to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was the centre of lab leak theories surrounding the Covid pandemic.

US intelligence agencies over the summer found no direct evidence that the lab leaked the coronavirus, though they did not rule out the possibility that the virus came from a different one. Covid’s origins are still unclear.

– with the New York Post

Originally published as ‘Madness’: Scientists in China experimenting with mutant Covid strain