BOSTON (WHDH) - Boston University is refuting a claim published in British publication The Daily Mail and picked up by other outlets including Fox News that one of its labs has “created a new deadly COVID strain.”
“They’ve sensationalized the message, they misrepresent the study and its goals in its entirety,” said Ronald B. Corley, director of the National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratories and BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine chair of microbiology.
BU also noted that its research, which resulted in the creation of less deadly strains rather than deadlier ones, was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Biosafety Committee and the Boston Public Health Commission.
The university said in a statement that “this research mirrors and reinforces the findings of other, similar research performed by other organizations, including the FDA. Ultimately, this research will provide a public benefit by leading to better, targeted therapeutic interventions to help fight against future pandemics.”
The study aimed to examine the spike proteins on the virus’s Omicron variant and compare them with the original virus strain. The goal of the research was to find out if the virus was less virulent than the original strain.
The Daily Mail story quoted a line in the research that said “‘In…mice, while Omicron causes mild, non-fatal infection, the Omicron S-carrying virus inflicts severe disease with a mortality rate of 80 percent.’”
Corley told BU publication The Brink that the out-of-context quote was unrelated to the virus’s effect on humans, and instead was tested in a particular type of mouse that is highly susceptible to the original strain of COVID-19.
Another researcher, Mohsan Saeed, added that, consistent with other studies, this one found that the spike protein is not the driver of “Omicron pathogenicity,” but instead, other viral proteins are.
The story added that the lab also adheres to stringent safety procedures.
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