MYSTERY OF DEADLY MINE VIRUS

SHI’S team investigated the deaths of three miners who suffered from a respiratory disease after clearing out an abandoned copper mine in southern China in 2012.

She told Scientific American magazine that fungus-covered bat droppings littered the cave and ‘the fungus turned out to be the pathogen that had sickened the miners.’ This line was repeated in the WHO report.

The miners may have died of secondary infection by fungus – but it seems they first developed a pneumonia that could have been caused by a virus.

Nature journal reported that efforts to find a cause of their respiratory disease included a test for antibodies to a Sars-like coronavirus that was negative. But a postgraduate thesis on the miner fatalities – which has disappeared from the internet – and George F Gao, China’s top infectious diseases expert, both reported antibodies being found. ‘We can’t rule out that they had a new virus in the mine at that time,’ Prof Gao said.