COVID-19 origins | GISAID U-turn adds to confusion over ‘new’ Chinese data

GISAID has made a U-turn on its position on an international group of researchers it claimed had not used in good faith novel coronavirus data uploaded by Chinese researchers.

In an unusual turn of events, the scientists who recently announced what they said was “compelling” evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic had a ‘natural’ origin rather than being the product of a lab experiment gone awry were banned by GISAID from using the database that contained the genomic information they used for their study – only for the latter to make a U-turn shortly after.

Many scientists have expressed surprise about the ban and the volte face, which appears to have further vitiated public conversations as well as intensified the spotlight on China’s recalcitrance against international investigations on the virus’s origins.

GISAID is an open-access database that was launched in 2008. It hit international headlines when, in January 2020, just before the pandemic began, researchers in China uploaded the first genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus to its server, giving the international community of virus and vaccine researchers quick and valuable insight into the virus that would change the world.

Soon, however, many scientists turned their attention to how or where the virus originated. Its first cases had been reported from the city of Wuhan, in China’s Hubei province, where there was also a wet market where there was both legal and illegal animal trade. Chinese authorities quickly shut the market, against the backdrop of multiple countries – China included – entering punishing lockdowns.

To this day, however, dispositive proof of the virus’s origins remains lacking. Conspiracy theories swirl on the internet and social media platforms, even as there are at least two groups of scientists divided on the issue. Part of the problem is that China has restricted access to genetic and biological data from the pandemic’s early days, related to the virus’s spread – even to a World Health Organization team that visited the country as part of a probe into the origins in 2021.

On March 16, American magazine The Atlantic reported that an international group of researchers had obtained data from the GISAID database uploaded by individuals affiliated with the Chinese Center for Disease Control (CCDC), but which was soon taken down. In this window, they had downloaded the data.

When they analysed it, they reportedly found genetic material belonging to raccoon dogs and to the novel coronavirus but not to humans in one part of the market. This conclusion appeared to favour the zoonotic theory of the virus’s origins over the lab-leak theory. It also contravened a claim by the Chinese team. The latter had collected the data in January 2020 and previously analysed it in a non-peer-reviewed paper in February 2022. That paper had said only infected humans had brought the virus into the market.