Row over study on bat viruses in Nagaland

Why is it in the news?

In December 2019, the Union Minister of Health began an inquiry into the study as it felt that appropriate permissions had not been taken by the National Centre for Biological Science and the Tata Institute of fundamental research from the Indian Council for Medical Research before accepting foreign funding and collaborations for the study. The study published in 2019, was founded by "a United States Department of Defence, Defence Threat Reduction Agency, Board Agency Announcement grant for the project 'Bat harvesting in India: Detection, characterization, and mitigation of emerging infectious disease risk'." the Biological Defence Research Directorate of the U.S. Naval Medical Research Center, as well as the Indian Department of Atomic Energy (DAE). 

Of the 12 authors, three were from India, five from the Duke-National University of Singapore Medical School, two from the U.S.Uniformec services University of the Health Sciences, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The government Investigation and subsequent queries spoke of "concerning lapses" in the study protocols. Also, they questioned whether the bat samples (nucleic acid extracts) should be stored at the NCBS, Bengaluru, or at the National Institute of Virology lab in Pune run by the ICMR, which has a higher Biosafety Level-4 standard rating.

What did the NCBS claim?

The NCBS denied all the charges in a statement in February 2020. Recently, its director, Satyajit Mayou, said that he did not know of any lapses. He had earlier said the government had given NCBS an "all-clear." The NCBS also said that it had received its clearance from the DAE, although the government's 1987 rules on funding collaborations give the Health Ministry and ICMR the final say. The NCBS also denied that the contribution of Shi Zhengli, known as China's 'Bat Woman' for her studies on virus transmission, was anything more than the supply of "chemical reagents." However, the study lists Dr. Shi as having "reviewed writing and editing" of the paper.

Is there a Wuhan connection to the Indian study?

No, say both officials and scientists. The Indian study looked at filoviruses (such as Ebola and Marburg). In contrast, the Wuhan studies, which originally collaborated with the U.S. University of North Carolina (UNC) and were funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), looked at coronaviruses SARS and MERS.

U.S. President Joseph Biden has ordered intelligence agencies to provide a conclusive finding by the end of August on whether the COVID-19 pandemic was caused by natural transmission or a lab leak. However, as demands grow for more transparency in collaborations with the Wuhan Institute, which was inspected as part of the World Health Organization's study into the pandemic's origins, there is a renewed focus on the NCBS-TIFR study. In the U.S., Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases under the NIH, was questioned at a Congressional hearing in May this year about the NIH funding and the Quan-UNC studies. In an interview to The New York Times this week, Dr. Shi denied that any regulations had been flouted at her labs, saying there was "no evidence" for theories of an accidental release of the SARS-CoV-2 The WHO Study also concluded that the "lab-leak" theory was unlikely, but required more study...

Earlier this month, Canada's Parliament voted to have their Public Health Agency (PHAC) released a document on the collaboration between its National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg and the Wuhan Institute of Virology on Ebola and Henipag viruses.