Health experts at the moment are voicing concern over the potential of one other pandemic after researchers at Boston University created a COVID-19 strain with an 80% kill rate.

A team of scientists from Florida and Boston on the university’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories combined the spike protein from the BA.1 Omicron variant with the unique virus in Wuhan. The brand new lab-created strain was tested on a gaggle of mice, 80% of which died. In contrast, a gaggle of rodents exposed to the usual Omicron strain all survived and only experienced “mild” symptoms. The study didn’t include humanized mice.

The COVID researchers said they created the brand new strain to “help fight against future pandemics,” the Boston Herald reported. Nevertheless, several scientists slammed the brand new virus manipulation research as dangerous.

“This must be totally forbidden, it’s fidgeting with fire,” Professor Shmuel Sharipa, a number one scientist within the Israeli government, was quoted as saying by The Day by day Mail.

Dr. Richard Ebright, a chemist at Rutgers University in Latest Brunswick, Latest Jersey, classified the brand new COVID strain as a product of “gain of function research.” He then called for higher oversight of research regarding the “potential pandemic pathogen.”

“If we’re to avoid a next lab-generated pandemic, it’s imperative that oversight of enhanced potential pandemic pathogen research be strengthened,” Ebright told the outlet.

By definition, a gain of function research refers back to the practice of manipulating a virus to be more infectious or deadly. Gain of function research is considered the origin of COVID-19.

Researchers at Boston University, nevertheless, said their research just isn’t gain of function research and noted that their study “made the virus replicate less dangerous.”

COVID-19 was first detected in a wet market in Wuhan. Many consider it was engineered by researchers on the Wuhan Institute of Virology, though the idea stays unproven. Other reports suggest COVID-19 spread naturally in a zoonotic jump from animals to humans.

The brand new research, which is published on BioRXiv, was approved by the Institutional Biosafety Committee, which consists of scientists and local people members, and the Boston Public Health Commission. The study has not yet been peer-reviewed.