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Originally designed to distinguish between natural epidemics and deliberate biological attacks, the researchers modified the Grunow-Finke tool by adjusting the criteria to determine the probability of the nature of the pandemic’s origin.
The study, whose findings were published in the journal Risk Analysis, said the possibility that the Covid pandemic has a laboratory origin cannot be easily ruled out.
The mGFT tool, previously applied to smaller outbreaks, contains 11 criteria such as the intensity and dynamics of the pandemic, including its rapid and unusual geographical spread, an unusual strain of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and the peculiarities of the clinical symptoms experienced .
Researchers at the University of New South Wales, Australia, assigned points from one to three to each criterion based on available evidence gathered from the literature and case data from the public source ‘Our World in Data’ which compiles information from the WHO, John Hopkins. University and official government reports.
Factors such as the biological risk of bat virus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the unusual strain, the intensity and dynamics of the pandemic were assigned points of three, three and two, respectively, while clinical symptoms were assigned two points.
Each criterion was multiplied by a weighting factor to calculate a score. A final score of more than 50 percent favored non-natural origins, while less favored natural origins.
The final score calculated by the mGFT algorithm gave a total of 41 out of 60 points. Being more than 50 percent, the researchers concluded that there is a higher probability that COVID-19 originates unnaturally, focusing on laboratory accidents or leaks as potential sources.
Being used for the first time in the context of a pandemic, researchers said the tool may require more testing and training. Additionally, higher scores tend to be assigned to criteria such as the intensity of the pandemic and unusually rapid spread, which can lead to high overall scores that favor unnatural origins.
To minimize subjectivity in scoring, two other experts reviewed the team’s results.
The researchers said that the modified GFT provides a risk analysis framework that can be applied to differentiate between natural and unnatural epidemics and that the tool should be included in the toolkit for investigating the origins of the pandemic.
“Strengths of this study include a more comprehensive analysis of factors ranging from traditional virology, epidemiology, and medical factors to situational and other intelligence,” the authors wrote in their study.
“The debate over the origins of SARS-COV-2 has largely focused on medical evidence, but not other intelligence data, which are key to identifying unnatural epidemics,” the researchers wrote.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to the text.