By Jennifer Rigby June 24, 2021 London: China has been accused of overseeing the deletion of crucial coronavirus data that could shine a light on the origins of the pandemic. Scientists at Wuhan University asked for the genomic sequencing of 50 COVID cases discovered in the city early last year to be deleted from a publicly searchable American database. The data, which has been rediscovered by an American scientist researching the origins of the pandemic, appears to show a previously missing stage in the evolution of the virus in humans. It also suggests the virus was circulating in Wuhan earlier than reported. A medical worker attends to a patient in the intensive care unit at Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University in January 2020.Credit:AP The US National Institutes of Health (NIH), which maintains the Sequence Read Archive (SRA), a giant repository of genome data, said it removed the gene sequences after a request from the team in June last year. More.... https://www.watoday.com.au/world/as...ic-deleted-from-database-20210624-p583s7.html