Tag Archives: Laboratory

Former CDC chief Redfield says he thinks COVID-19 originated in a Chinese lab

(Reuters) – The former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said he believes the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 likely escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, embracing a theory rejected by many global epidemiologists that has contributed to tensions between China and the West.

“I still think the most likely ideology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory, you know, escaped,” Robert Redfield, who headed the CDC in the Trump administration, said in a televised interview with CNN.

“It’s not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in a laboratory to infect a laboratory worker,” he said.

Redfield said that he thought it unlikely a disease that originated in bats – as many experts believe – so swiftly “became one of the most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human-to-human transmission,” but added that he was not saying release of the virus was intentional.

Redfield’s opinion was in line with other Trump administration officials such as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who said recently that there was a “significant amount of evidence” that the virus came from a lab, without providing any evidence.

U.S. infectious disease chief Anthony Fauci, who served in the Trump administration and now serves under President Joe Biden, said most public health officials disagree with the Chinese lab theory, when asked about Redfield’s comments during a White House COVID-19 briefing.

Most believe that the virus was circulating for a month or more before it was clinically recognized in China, and that in that time it could have adapted itself to more efficient transmission between humans, said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.

A World Health Organization report on its investigation into the origins of the coronavirus is expected soon. The head of the WHO-led team in February said bats remain a likely source and effectively ruled out a lab leak.

(Reporting By Peter Henderson; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Tyson Foods backs Israeli startup to grow meat in the lab

Yaakov Nahmias, founder and chief scientist of Future Meat Technologies, holds laboratory-grown fat samples in his lab in Jerusalem May 2, 2018. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Tyson Foods, the largest U.S. meat processor, has invested in an Israeli biotech company developing a way to grow affordable meat in a laboratory that takes live animals out of the equation.

Future Meat Technologies focuses on producing fat and muscle cells that are the core building blocks of meat, and is one of several firms working on technology to match rising demand for meat without adding more pressure on land from livestock.

The firm’s founder and chief scientist, Yaakov Nahmias, said cultured meat typically had a production price of about $10,000 per kg but so far his company had reduced that to $800/kg and had “a clear roadmap to $5-$10/kg by 2020.”

Tyson’s venture capital arm has supported the Jerusalem-based startup by co-leading $2.2 million in seed investment.

“We continue to invest significantly in our traditional meat business but also believe in exploring additional opportunities for growth that give consumers more choices,” said Justin Whitmore, Tyson’s executive vice president for corporate strategy.

In December, Tyson raised its stake in plant-based protein maker Beyond Meat.

Demand for meat is expected to double between 2000 and 2050, when the earth’s population is set to surpass 9 billion, and proponents of growing meat in the lab say it is the only way to meet such demand without destroying the environment.

A study by Oxford University and the University of Amsterdam estimated that cultured meat would produce 96 percent less greenhouse gas, consume 82 to 96 percent less water and virtually eliminate land requirements needed to raise livestock.

(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by Edmund Blair)

China’s ‘mosquito factory’ aims to wipe out Zika, other diseases

mosquitoes being released

GUANGZHOU, China (Reuters) – Every week, scientists in southern China release 3 million bacteria-infected mosquitoes on a 3 km (two-mile) long island in a bid to wipe out diseases such as dengue, yellow fever and Zika.

The scientists inject mosquito eggs with wolbachia bacteria in a laboratory, then release infected male mosquitoes on the island on the outskirts of the city of Guangzhou.

The bacteria, which occurs naturally in about 28 percent of wild mosquitoes, causes infected males to sterilize the females they mate with.

“The aim is trying to suppress the mosquito density below the threshold which can cause disease transmission,” said Zhiyong Xi, who is director of the Sun Yat-sen University Centre of Vector Control for Tropical Diseases and pioneered the idea.

“There are hot spots,” Xi said. “This technology can be used at the beginning to target the hot spots … it will dramatically reduce disease transmission.”

Mosquito-borne diseases are responsible for more than one million deaths worldwide every year and Zika has become a concern for athletes at this year’s Olympic Games, which open in Rio de Janeiro on Friday.

Some athletes, including the top four ranked male golfers, have declined to take part.

An outbreak of the Zika virus in Brazil last year has spread through the Americas and beyond, with China confirming its first case in February.

U.S. health officials have concluded that Zika infections in pregnant women can cause microcephaly, a birth defect marked by small head size that can lead to severe developmental problems in babies.

The World Health Organization has said there is strong scientific consensus that Zika can also cause Guillain-Barre, a rare neurological syndrome that causes temporary paralysis in adults.

Sun Yat-sen’s Xi said that several countries had expressed interest in his experiments, especially Brazil and Mexico.

In the laboratory, mosquito eggs are collected from breeding cages containing 5,000 females and 1,600 males and injected with the wolbachia bacteria. Xi’s facility has the capacity to breed up to five million mosquitoes a week.

While a female mosquito that acquires wolbachia by mating is sterile, one that is infected by injection will produce wolbachia-infected offspring. Dengue, yellow fever and Zika are also suppressed in wolbachia-injected females, making it harder for the diseases to be transmitted to humans.

Xi set up his 3,500 square meter (38,000 sq ft) “mosquito factory” in 2012 and releases the males into two residential areas on the outskirts of Guangzhou.

Xi said the mosquito population on the island has been reduced by more than 90 percent.

One villager on the island, 66 year-old Liang Jintian, who has lived there for six decades, said the study was so effective he didn’t have to sleep with a mosquito net any longer.

“We used to have a lot of mosquitoes in the past. Back then some people were worried that if mosquitoes were released here, we would get even more mosquitoes,” he said. “We have a lot less mosquitoes now compared to the past.”

(Reporting by Reuters TV; Writing by Clare Baldwin; Editing by Robert Birsel)