The coronavirus genetic sequence was submitted to a US database two weeks before China announced the virus, documents show

(CNN) — The genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, was sent to the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) database two weeks before the Chinese government released it, according to documents shared with US lawmakers. And published this Wednesday.

The sequence does not indicate the origin of the coronavirus, but it undermines the Chinese government’s claims about its knowledge of the information, an expert told CNN, and could cost crucial weeks in the development of a vaccine against the virus.

On December 28, 2019, virologist Dr. of the Institute of Pathogen Biology of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Beijing Union Medical College. Lily Raine submitted the genetic sequence to GenBank, a “gene sequence repository” that collects, preserves and provides. Public access to assembled and annotated nucleotide sequence data from all walks of life,” said a letter sent last month by Dr. Melanie Agorin, assistant secretary for legislation at the US Department of Health and Human Services, to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rogers.

GenBank is administered by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, part of the US National Institutes of Health.

According to the letter, Ren’s application was “incomplete and lacked information necessary for publication.” A resubmission request was sent three days later, but “NIH never received the additional information requested.” The submission was removed from the processing queue on January 16, 2020, and “the sequence was never made publicly available in GenBank.”

However, a different representation of the genetic sequence that was “almost identical” to Ren’s was published in GenBank on January 12, Agorin said, a day after the World Health Organization said it had found Ren’s sequence. China.

McMorris Rogers (R-Wash.); Health Subcommittee Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.); And Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, said in a statement Wednesday that the commission’s investigation into the origins of Covid-19 will help policymakers strengthen the nation’s biosecurity practices. Be prepared for the next pandemic.

They noted that they received the new information about two months after informing the NIH of their intention to send a subpoena to obtain copies of documents related to the first sequence of the coronavirus, the first case of Covid-19 or other relevant information.

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center Virologist Dr. Jesse Bloom wrote in an analysis of Ren’s presentation on Wednesday that it “clearly refutes the Chinese government’s claim that the causative agent of the Wuhan pneumonia outbreak has not yet been identified.” First week of January 2020.”

The earlier submission “had it been made public would have provided enough information to start vaccine production in late 2019,” he said, two days after drugmaker Moderna “used the spike sequence to design a Covid-19 vaccine.” then. January 12 release.

However, Bloom said, the genetic sequence is “unlikely to represent the first virus to infect humans” and “does not provide new insight into the origin or early spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan.”

“The late discovery of the submission underscores the importance of rapid data sharing during the outbreak, as the immediate release of the sequence would have accelerated the development of a Covid-19 vaccine by several weeks that saved thousands of lives every week in the United States alone.” he said.

Founder and Director of Scripps Research Translational Institute Dr. Eric Topol agreed that even two weeks “would have made a huge difference in the epidemic.” The fact that the vaccine program began soon after the release of the genetic sequence “shows how important that sequence was.”

“When you sequence a virus—it’s not even a vaccine—you hit the nail on the head. You know exactly the characteristics about the spike protein and all the other key components: the nucleocapsid, the envelope, the whole big picture virus. That’s not achieved without sequencing. “

An evolutionary biologist and director of infectious disease genomics at the Translational Institute, Dr. Papers should be read in retrospect, said Christian Anderson.

“At the end of 2019, no one knew that a pandemic would follow,” he wrote in an email. “This is a really crucial part that most people seem to forget: no one knew then that a never-before-seen coronavirus distantly related to SARS-CoV-1 was causing ‘mysterious’ illnesses in patients associated with wet markets in the middle of nowhere. Wuhan, which would later trigger a devastating epidemic.

“Should that sequence have been made public at the time and (marked) as preliminary data? Sure, that would have been great, and it’s a good example that we can aim to do better in the future,” he said. “Anyone reviewing the sequence at NCBI during the holiday period in 2019 would have no way of connecting this sequence to the ‘mystery’ disease in Wuhan, as it had not yet been reported.”

— CNN’s Jane Christensen and Brenda Goodman contributed to this report.