Fact Check-SARS-CoV-2 has been isolated and its complete genome has been sequenced
An interview with a late Canadian writer has resurfaced on social media and shows him making several false claims about COVID-19. Among them, he questions the existence of coronaviruses by saying they have never been isolated. This is not true, and such a claim reveals the writer’s lack of understanding of virology.
A clip from the interview was posted to several Instagram accounts in mid-March (here, here and here), and was taken from a wider 95-minute podcast recorded in May 2020 (here). It shows the interviewee, who died several months later (here, here), claiming scientists who say SARS-CoV-2 has been isolated are lying as “nobody has ever purified a coronavirus”
They took a nasal swab and they processed it somehow; like you have to add antibiotics to kill bacteria and things like that. So you process it and add it to a cell culture. They observed cells dying in the cell culture and they wrote: ‘We have isolated the virus.’ Clearly, it’s not specific. Even if you have identified a virus, you haven’t identified a specific virus. So then they searched around for RNA and they found a long string of RNA which looked like what had previously been called coronavirus. But nobody has ever purified a coronavirus.”
When asked whether this means no one knows if coronaviruses exist, he added: “Yeah, I think what they did; they looked at people with the common cold and they found some RNA patterns and they said: ‘Oh this must be the virus.’ They leaped to these conclusions. With the new world of biotechnology and PCR, this technology that underlines the test, these things are really easy to do but they’re not grounded in anything.”
However, the first argument relating to isolation is not true. There are multiple examples of scientists isolating SARS-CoV-2 (
here,
[URL="https://theconversation.com/i-study-viruses-how-our-team-isolated-the-new-coronavirus-to-fight-the-global-pandemic-133675"]here,[/URL]
here, here), the virus that causes COVID-19 disease, where they also sequenced the complete genome (
here,
here,
here). Pictures of isolated SARS-CoV-2 particles have been released by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (
here).
Meanwhile, the second argument, that coronaviruses have never been purified, shows a misunderstanding of how viruses work – and does not prove they do not exist. Siouxsie Wiles, an associate professor at the University of Auckland’s Department of Molecular Medicine and Pathology, has previously addressed similar claims, saying they reference outdated microbiological theory (
here).
VERDICT
False. There are numerous examples of scientists isolating SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID -19, and sequencing its genome. The argument about purification relates to 19th Century microbiological theory that does not apply to viruses.
The novel coronavirus has been proven to exist and has caused millions of deaths worldwide.
