Boston University researchers say they've developed a new strain of the COVID-19 virus with an 80% kill rate. .The combination of a strain of the Omicron variant and the original SARS-CoV-2 virus out of Wuhan, China, reportedly killed 80% of the mice infected with the new deadly variant, according to the university. .The research — done at the National Emerging Infection Disease Laboratories — was conducted by a team of scientists from Florida and Boston and involved extracting the spike protein from Omicron, combining it with the original strain from Wuhan. .The lab out of Boston U is one of 13 biosafety level-four labs in the US authorized to handle the most dangerous pathogens..The research, considered to be gain of function, shows the team of scientists "generated chimeric recombinant SARS-CoV-2 encoding the S gene of Omicron in the backbone of an ancestral SARS-CoV-2 islolate" and compared the newly designed virus with the naturally circulating Omicron variant. .According to findings, the new strain — when introduced to human lung cells— was found to be five times more infectious than the Omicron variant. .The released research paper — only a preprint and has yet to be peer reviewed — shows while the naturally occurring Omicron variant caused mild symptoms in infected mice, "the Omicron S-carrying virus inflicts severe disease with a mortality rate of 80%.".Compare that to Omicron's proper Infection Fatality Ratio (IFR) of .15%, and it becomes clear how dangerous the variant actually is. ."The Omicron S-bearing virus robustly escapes vaccine-induced humoral immunity, mainly due to mutations in the receptor binding motif (RBM), yet unlike naturally occurring Omicron, efficiently replicates in cell lines and primary-like distal lung cells," reads the findings. .Thus, the newly created virus spreads faster with a much larger mortality rate in the mice used during the research, compared to naturally occurring omicron. ."...while Omicron-infected mice displayed little to no signs of clinical illness, the health of those infected with [wild type] and Omi-S rapidly deteriorated, with the former inflicting a more severe disease," reads the research findings. .Although COVID-19 is reported to have derived from a wet market in Wuhan, many believe the virus was engineered at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. .Despite being deadly to the rodents used in the study, researchers acknowledged their man-made virus was less likely to be as lethal in humans due to the mice not having identical immune responses and because their brains use the same genes differently than human brains.
Boston University researchers say they've developed a new strain of the COVID-19 virus with an 80% kill rate. .The combination of a strain of the Omicron variant and the original SARS-CoV-2 virus out of Wuhan, China, reportedly killed 80% of the mice infected with the new deadly variant, according to the university. .The research — done at the National Emerging Infection Disease Laboratories — was conducted by a team of scientists from Florida and Boston and involved extracting the spike protein from Omicron, combining it with the original strain from Wuhan. .The lab out of Boston U is one of 13 biosafety level-four labs in the US authorized to handle the most dangerous pathogens..The research, considered to be gain of function, shows the team of scientists "generated chimeric recombinant SARS-CoV-2 encoding the S gene of Omicron in the backbone of an ancestral SARS-CoV-2 islolate" and compared the newly designed virus with the naturally circulating Omicron variant. .According to findings, the new strain — when introduced to human lung cells— was found to be five times more infectious than the Omicron variant. .The released research paper — only a preprint and has yet to be peer reviewed — shows while the naturally occurring Omicron variant caused mild symptoms in infected mice, "the Omicron S-carrying virus inflicts severe disease with a mortality rate of 80%.".Compare that to Omicron's proper Infection Fatality Ratio (IFR) of .15%, and it becomes clear how dangerous the variant actually is. ."The Omicron S-bearing virus robustly escapes vaccine-induced humoral immunity, mainly due to mutations in the receptor binding motif (RBM), yet unlike naturally occurring Omicron, efficiently replicates in cell lines and primary-like distal lung cells," reads the findings. .Thus, the newly created virus spreads faster with a much larger mortality rate in the mice used during the research, compared to naturally occurring omicron. ."...while Omicron-infected mice displayed little to no signs of clinical illness, the health of those infected with [wild type] and Omi-S rapidly deteriorated, with the former inflicting a more severe disease," reads the research findings. .Although COVID-19 is reported to have derived from a wet market in Wuhan, many believe the virus was engineered at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. .Despite being deadly to the rodents used in the study, researchers acknowledged their man-made virus was less likely to be as lethal in humans due to the mice not having identical immune responses and because their brains use the same genes differently than human brains.
