The new research claims that scientists took a natural coronavirus “backbone” found in Chinese cave bats and spliced onto it a new “spike”, turning it into the deadly and highly transmissible Covid-19.

The paper also quotes that researchers found “unique fingerprints” in Covid-19 samples that they say could only have arisen from manipulation in a laboratory.Authors Dalgleish and Sorensen wrote in their paper that they had prima facie evidence of retro-engineering in China’ for a year, but were ignored by academics and major journals, reported DailyMail.com.

A multicenter team of scientists in France studied a B.1.617.2 variant isolated from a traveler returning from India. Compared to the B.1.1.7 variant first identified in Britain, the India variant was more resistant to antibody drugs, although three currently approved drugs still remained effective against it, they found.