Coronavirus: Hong Kong researchers get HK$100 million in grants to look into origins of Covid-19, effectiveness of additional vaccine doses

One team will comb through collection of animal samples said to be among world’s largest in effort to trace origins of Covid-19

Another will study transmissibility, reproduction rates of major variants of concern

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Hong Kong researchers have been granted HK$100 million for studies focusing on the coronavirus. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 9:17pm, 13 Jul 2021Updated: 11:01pm, 13 Jul 2021

Hong Kong researchers will comb through a collection containing more than 6,000 animal samples in an effort to uncover the source of Covid-19 under a recently approved measure setting aside HK$100 million (US$12.9 million) in public funding for coronavirus-related studies.

The grants will also go towards research into potential new treatments for Covid-19, the transmissibility of the virus’ major variants and the effectiveness of administering third doses of the BioNTech and Sinovac vaccines.

More than 18 months into the pandemic, researchers from around the world still have not definitively traced the origins of the coronavirus.

People queue up for coronavirus jabs at a community vaccination centre. One of the new studies will look at the efficacy of administering extra doses. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

Despite renewed interest in a theory that the virus may have escaped from a lab in Wuhan, where it was first detected, experts on a World Health Organization-backed mission earlier this year said that possibility was “extremely unlikely”. They said the virus was most likely to have originated in a bat and was then passed on to humans via another animal.

A 22-member team led by three University of Hong Kong (HKU) microbiologists, including government pandemic adviser Professor Yuen Kwok-yung, along with experts from Baptist University and Chinese University, has been given nearly HK$40 million by the Research Grants Council for a five-year study aimed at identifying the animal origin of Covid-19.

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