China has been experimenting with a new deadly coronavirus-like virus that is “100% fatal to mice,” it has been revealed.
According to a new paper published on bioRxiv, doctors trained by the Chinese military had made their own version of “pangolin coronavirus” and had given it to a group of mice to see what would happen.
The pangolin animal can get coronavirus, so that is the version experts have used for this experiment, and called it GX_P2V.
The experts found that the four mice given the virus all dramatically lost weight within five days after being infected, started to become “sluggish” and their eyes went white. And just eight days after they were given it, they all died.
It was then found that the virus had spread to the brain, eyes and lungs, and had actually increased in the brain over the last two days of life.
The scientists have claimed they were “surprised” by the results and they warned that the virus could “spill over into humans”.
They said: “This finding suggested that severe brain infection during the later stages of infection may be the key cause of death in these mice.
“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report showing that a SARS-CoV-2-related pangolin coronavirus can cause 100% mortality in hACE2 mice, suggesting a risk for GX_P2V to spill over into humans. Due to the propensity of coronaviruses to undergo adaptive mutation during passage culture, we cloned and analysed mutations in GX_P2V, focusing specifically on the pathogenicity of the cloned strains.
“The high pathogenicity mechanism of GX_P2V C7 in hACE2 mice, in the absence of the wild-type GX_P2V control, requires further investigation.”
More tests are set to be carried out with a live version of the virus from the wild, rather than using a lab-made version.