The Wuhan Institute of virology was actively working with the viruses uncovered in the bat cave

While scientists from across the world have started expressing opinions on the Wuhan lab theory and China’s deliberate attempt to hide the fact from surfacing, a group of two dozen people working anonymously from different countries have gathered an evidence suggesting that a lab leak from Wuhan was the cause of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In its exclusive coverage, ‘How Amateur Sleuths Broke the Wuhan Lab Story and Embarrassed the Media,’ the US-based popular magazine, Newsweek has maintained that these people working under a group called ‘DRASTIC’ have found that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had an extensive collection of coronavirus gathered over many years of foraging in the bat caves.

Without beating around the bush, the US magazine further said, “Thanks to DRASTIC, we now know that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had an extensive collection of coronaviruses gathered over many years of foraging in the bat caves, and many of them, including the closest known relative to the pandemic virus, SARS-CoV-2-came from a mineshaft where three men died from a suspected SARS-like disease in 2012.”

The US magazine said that DRASTIC discovered that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was actively working with the viruses uncovered in the bat cave, “using inadequate safety protocols, in ways that could have triggered the pandemic, and that the lab and Chinese authorities have gone to great lengths to conceal these activities.”

“The first cases of Covid-19, it turns out, had appeared weeks before the outbreak at the Huanan wet market that was once thought to be ground zero,” DRASTIC’s findings based on uncovering obscure documents and by piecing together several information and spending hours by collectively undertaking brainstorming session, said.

As per the group, the Wuhan Institute of Virology was actively working with the viruses uncovered in the bat cave, “using inadequate safety protocols, in ways that could have triggered the pandemic, and that the lab and Chinese authorities have gone to great lengths to conceal these activities”.

The Newsweek report highlighted that the group had combed through thousands of documents and Chinese scientific papers to find that researchers had discovered a family of SARS viruses in a mineshaft in Mojiang village in Yunnan province in 2012

In its findings DRASTIC maintained that six miners had been infected with a virus called RaTG13, which has a similar genetic make as the SARS virus. Three of the miners later died.

The group’s findings led them to bat virologist Shi Zhengli, who is also the director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The group tracked scientific papers that Shi published and comments she made to the media in 2020 to claim the 2012 virus discovered in the mine is likely the precursor to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that triggered the Covid-19 pandemic.