The frightening warning of the ‘batwoman’, the Chinese virologist who knows most about the coronavirus

Within hours I was on a train, speeding back Wuhan after being informed that two patients had been admitted to hospital with an unusual strain of pneumonia.

The disease turned out to be what was believed to be the first known case of Covid-19, the coronavirus that has now claimed the lives of more than a million people around the world.

It was December 30 of last year and in a few days Shi Zhengli had discovered the genetic code of Covid-19.

However, these cases may not have been the first, as a report claims that a 55-year-old man from China’s Hubei province was in fact a ‘zero patient’ on November 17, a year ago. year today.

The South China Post reported that the anonymous man was the first person to show symptoms of the deadly pandemic, with five cases emerging each day for the following weeks.

Mentions of “ coronavirus ”, “ shortness of breath ” and “ SARS ” also rose on WeChat, the Chinese messaging service in the weeks leading up to December 8, 2019, when the Wuhan County government initially told the Organization. World Health Organization on infection.

For Zhengli, the phone call that changed the lives of billions of people around the world was one he had dreaded for many years. She had been studying coronaviruses for 16 years and was a global infection expert.

For two months, the 56-year-old barely left her lab as she worked around the clock to find out all she could about the new virus.

She survived on instant noodles as she and her team worked not only to identify the virus, but also to find the key to a cure. Its work has been picked up by scientists around the world and the first vaccines have now been shown to be at least 90% effective against Covid-19.

The coronavirus pandemic was not a total shock to Zhengli, who made his first expedition to examine bats in 2004. It was on his first scientific trip to examine whether bats could be the source of the coronavirus that Zhengli was tasked with finding out. if civets, which look like mongooses, had been the source of the SARS epidemic. From there she was nicknamed “Bat Woman”.

Found in the subtropics of Asia and Africa, it traveled to caves near Nanning, where the work was extremely hard and often frustrating. For eight months, Zhengli made no progress until a nearby lab handed her and her team a diagnostic kit to test for antibodies produced by people with SARS.

With “nothing to lose,” the team used the tests and the results were instantaneous. Antibodies to SARS were found in three species of bats, meaning they were one step closer to discovering the genetic code.

After testing a large number of sites, the team restricted their research to the outskirts of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, and for the next five years, they focused their research on this area.

They found hundreds of strains of the coronavirus, but luckily only dozens were similar to SARS and could infect human lungs. They were also immune to vaccines and remedies that had been shown to be effective against other forms of the virus.

In a cave, scientists discovered what appeared to be the epicenter of SARS, but it carried an additional risk. This meant that millions of bats were mixing together and creating more and more opportunities for the virus to evolve and the emergence of new strains.

They also found that the virus could spread to those who did not directly handle animals. People who lived in a nearby town had seen bats flying. Six people had suffered from symptoms similar to SARS.

And Zhengli believes that as people increasingly move to areas that were once wildlife havens, the risk of new strains of the coronavirus unleashing on humanity increases.

This, along with the movement of wildlife and livestock across the globe, combined with the increase in long-distance travel, creates the perfect conditions for the possible spread of a pandemic, something Zhengli has long feared.

A year ago, Zhengli and his team published a study warning of the potential for a bat-borne pandemic. They did not know that 12 months later their predictions of the end of the world would come true.

And while he says the Wuhan epidemic was a “wake-up call”, he fears that another pandemic could occur in the future.

Zhengli said: “What we have discovered is just the tip of an iceberg. The mission must continue. Coronaviruses transmitted by bats will cause more epidemics and we must find them before they find us. “