Mutant COVID-19 Strain: Chinese Scientists Create Virus With 100% Kill Rate in Mice

Chinese scientists are under scrutiny after successfully creating a mutant COVID-19 strain that has a 100% kill rate in "humanized" mice.

The experiment involves the deadly virus known as GX_P2V that attacks the creatures' brains. The mice used in the study have been engineered to reflect a genetic makeup similar to human beings.

Experiments With Mutant COVID-19 Strain

(Photo : JOEL SAGET / AFP) (JOEL SAGET/AFP via Getty Images)
Chinese scientists are under scrutiny after experimenting with a mutant COVID-19 virus that they found had a 100% kill rate in "humanized" mice.(not actual photo)

The authors of the study issued a statement saying that the findings underscore a spillover risk of GX_P2V into humans and provide a unique model for understanding the pathogenic mechanisms of coronavirus-related infections.

The deadly strain used in the study is a mutated version of GX/2017, which is a coronavirus cousin that was reportedly discovered in Malaysian pangolins in 2017. This was three years before the global pandemic. Pangolins are mammals that are located in warm areas of the planet.

All of the mice that the researchers experimented on were infected with the virus and died within just eight days, This was a development that the team noted was a "surprisingly" rapid death rate, as per the New York Post.

The mutant GX_P2V virus was able to infect the mice's lungs, bones, eyes, tracheas, and brains. In the days before the creatures' deaths from the virus, the animals quickly lost weight, exhibited a hunched posture, and moved extremely sluggish.

Probably the most eerie thing that the researchers observed was that the mice's eyes turned completely white the day before they died. While the observations were terrifying, the study has become the first of its kind to report a 100% mortality rate in mice that were infected by the COVID-19-related virus, which far surpasses previously reported results from a different study.

The results of the experiment also did not indicate how the mutated COVID-19 strain would affect human beings if they were infected. An epidemiology expert at University College London's Genetics Institute, Francois Ballous, criticized the research as "terrible" and "scientifically totally pointless."

Highly Deadly Virus

He added that there was nothing of vague interest that could have been learned from the experiment where researchers force-infected a weird breed of humanized mice with a random virus, according to the Daily Mail.

Furthermore, a chemist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Professor Richard Ebright, said that he wholeheartedly agrees with Balloux's assessment. He added that the preprint does not specify the biosafety level and biosafety precautions that the researchers used for the study.

He said that the absence of this information raises the concerning possibility that part or all of the research was performed recklessly. This means that it could have lacked the minimal biosafety containment and practices that are considered crucial for research involving potential pandemic pathogens.

The criticisms against the experiment come as the 2024 study does not appear to have any links to China's Wuhan Institute of Virology. The latter was the center of lab leak theories surrounding the sudden spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over the summer, United States intelligence agencies did not find any direct evidence that the Wuhan lab leaked the coronavirus. However, they did not rule out the possibility that the virus came from a different center, said the Herald Sun.