A post on social media claims that SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes Covid-19) has “never been: isolated, purified, sequenced, characterised” or “proven to exist”.
As we have written before, SARS-CoV-2 has been isolated many times. Dr. Stephen Griffin, a virologist and Associate Professor at Leeds Institute of Medical Research previously told Full Fact: “SARS-CoV2 has been sampled millions of times over from infected people, including those originally found to be infected in China”.
The genetic information of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has also been extensively sequenced in the UK, and around the world. This has allowed scientists to understand more about the virus’ transmission and how variants have evolved. SARS-CoV-2 has also been well characterised in the literature.
The existence of SARS-CoV-2 is well documented and a pandemic was declared by the World Health Organisation in March 2020.