Russian scientists retract coronavirus genome sequence that set alarm bells ringing
- Initial findings suggested virus was mutating at a dramatic rate that threatened efforts to create a vaccine
- One scientist said the research was either ‘really weird or really wrong’
Russia has retracted a coronavirus genome sequence that contained an unusually large amount of mutations that set off an alarm bells in Beijing, a senior government scientist in Moscow has confirmed.
In an updated file later submitted to the international database GISAID, the mutations were reduced by 96 per cent.
The sequence, collected from a female Covid-19 patient in St Petersburg on March 15 and uploaded to the GISAID database five days later, was the first and so far only strain of the virus that causes Covid-19 released to the public from Russia.
According to the original data, the St Petersburg strain carried 200 mutations compared with the first sample released by Chinese researchers in early January.
Scientists in most other countries have found that the coronavirus evolved at a pace of only about two mutations per month.
If the Russian findings had been correct, it would have meant that the Russian strain had been mutating 30 times faster than normal.