Japan researchers: All Covid variants were created in lab

by WorldTribune Staff, October 9, 2023

Japanese researchers have found that all variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid, were in fact made in a laboratory.

The study, led by Japanese professors Atsuki Tanaka and Takayuki Miyazawa of Osaka Medical University and Kyoto University, sought to trace the historical evolution of the omicron variant of the virus.

To trace the variant’s origins, Tanaka and Miyazawa wrote in a new paper titled “Unnaturalness in the Evolution Process of the SARS-CoV-2 variants and the possibility of deliberate natural selection”, they studied viral sequences found “in the wild” and deposited in public databases.

The researchers said they found around 100 separate omicron subvariants that could not conceivably have arisen through natural processes.

The existence of these variants seems to provide definitive proof of large-scale lab creation of Covid viruses, Tanaka and Miyazawa wrote.

Tanaka and Miyazawa state in the paper:

“Over the past three years, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has repeatedly caused pandemics, generating various mutated variants ranging from Alpha to Omicron. In this study, we aimed to clarify the evolutionary processes leading to the formation of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants, focusing on Omicron variants with many amino acid mutations in the spike protein among SARS-CoV-2 isolates.

“To determine the order of mutations leading to the formation of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants, we compared the sequences of 129 Omicron BA.1-related, 141 BA.1.1-related, and 122 BA.2-related isolates, and attempted to clarify the evolutionary processes of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants, including the order of mutations leading to their formation and the occurrence of homologous recombination.

“As a result, we concluded that the formation of a part of Omicron isolates BA.1, BA.1.1, and BA.2 was not the product of genome evolution, as is commonly observed in nature, such as the accumulation of mutations and homologous recombinations. Furthermore, the study of 35 recombinant isolates of Omicron variants BA.1 and BA.2 confirmed that Omicron variants were already present in 2020.

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