Russian Defense Ministry Sounds Alarm Over US Research That Amplified Omicron Lethality

Russian Defense Ministry Sounds Alarm Over US Research That Amplified Omicron Lethality

The head of the Russian Defense Ministry's biohazard unit raised alarm on Saturday over a recent experiment by the Boston University to create a much more infectious and deadly coronavirus strain than the existing Omicron

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 26th November, 2022) The head of the Russian Defense Ministry's biohazard unit raised alarm on Saturday over a recent experiment by the Boston University to create a much more infectious and deadly coronavirus strain than the existing Omicron.

The university released a study on the preprint website bioRxiv in October claiming that the new recombinant virus, dubbed Omi-S, caused "a severe disease leading to around 80% mortality" in mice. The strain was pieced together from an early 2020 coronavirus variant and the spike protein of Omicron BA.1, a strain that kicked off most COVID-19 waves in the first pandemic winter.

Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov said the fact that the experiment was allowed to go ahead spoke to a lack of state supervision over genetic engineering and synthetic biology, which studies how living organisms can be redesigned for new purposes.

"Despite high biological risks, the experiment was paid for with American budget money without the permission of a national biosecurity regulator," Kirillov said at a news briefing.

The experiment was conducted at the Boston University's National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories. In the pre-print, the scientists said their coronavirus research was funded in part with grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Back in 2021, the NIH sought to distance itself from any gain-of-function research on coronaviruses, saying neither it nor NIAID ever approved a grant supporting research that would have increased the transmissibility or lethality of the virus for humans. The Boston University's study only looked at mice.