[Bus Insider] A researcher in Seattle claims he's discovered 13 partial coronavirus sequences from samples collected in Wuhan, China, that were deleted from a US database last year.The discovery could mean scientists researching the origins of the pandemic have been working with incomplete data, he said.
Dr. Jesse Bloom, a researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, said Tuesday that he had recovered the deleted files from Google Cloud, and had reconstructed partial sequences of 13 viruses. He said they came from samples taken at the early stages of pandemic in Wuhan, where scientists first discovered SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
The data initially came from a study by Wuhan University scientists, he said.
Bloom said his findings suggested the coronavirus was already circulating in Wuhan before being linked to COVID-19 outbreaks at the Huanan Seafood Market. They also suggested the sequences used in most studies into the virus' origins, including the joint WHO-China report, "are not fully representative of the viruses actually present in Wuhan at that time," he said.
Throughout the pandemic, Bloom has called for more research into the origins of the pandemic. But he told CNN that the new sequences alone didn't provide any further evidence about whether the virus spread naturally from animals to humans or was, as some claim, the result of a laboratory leak.
Bloom said that the samples, from early outpatients in Wuhan, were a "gold mine" for scientists wanting to understand the spread of the virus.
Related: Hot Air - NIH: Yes, a Chinese scientist asked us to delete his data from early Wuhan COVID samples -- and we did