The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), has been listed as one of the candidates for the 2021 Outstanding Science and Technology Achievement Prize of CAS for its achievement in identifying the COVID-19 pathogeny.
China’s “bat woman” Shi Zhengli, and Yuan Zhiming, director of the WIV’s Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory were selected as the outstanding contributors of the WIV group candidates.
CAS published the candidate list on its official website on Friday. The award is mainly given to individuals or research groups who have made or demonstrated significant achievements in the past five years. CAS awards 10 such individuals and research groups annually.
CAS said the WIV quickly carried out pathogen identification after the outbreak of COVID-19, completed the entire virus genome sequencing and virus isolation within a short time, confirmed that the COVID-19 virus shares the same functional receptor as the SARS virus, systematically analyzed the basic biological characteristics of the virus, and revealed that coronavirus carried by bats may be the evolutionary ancestor of the COVID-19 coronavirus.
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