Chinese scientists deleted key data that could help identify origins of COVID-19, study claims

Chinese researchers appear to have deleted important data from a global database operated by the National Institutes of Health that could provide key insights into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, a preprint study claims. An American scientist recovered the deleted data from cloud storage and published his analysis Tuesday. The paper, "Recovery of deleted deep sequencing data sheds more light on the early Wuhan SARS-CoV-2 epidemic," suggests that early virus samples from the Wuhan seafood market that until now have been the focus of most studies on the origins of the pandemic "are not fully representative of the viruses actually present in Wuhan at that time."-- More...