基因溯源科学家：法国新冠疫情暴发与中国无直接关系
新冠病毒的源头到底在哪里？目前尚无定论。不过，国外的一些政客却试图通过“甩锅”和指责中国的方式，来转移对其防疫不利的指责。
我们为什么要溯源？因为这有助于我们制定针对性的防控策略，避免类似疫情再度对人类社会造成伤害。这应当是个科学问题，但某些人却将这样的溯源作为对别国主张索赔的基础。这是“政客逻辑”而非“科学逻辑”。
政客在妄下结论，全世界的科学家却在共同解决问题。最近，法国科学家发表的一项研究成果显示，法国的新冠疫情是由当地来源不明的毒株引起的。科学家猜测，这一毒株可能来源于比利时。
日前，香港《南华早报》对这一研究进行了报道。报道题目为《Coronavirus outbreak in France did not come directly from China, gene-tracing scientists say》（《基因溯源科学家：法国新冠疫情暴发与中国无直接关系》）
以下为英文报道全文以及翻译。
The coronavirus outbreak in France was not caused by cases imported from China, but from a locally circulating strain of unknown origin, according to a new study by French scientists at the Institut Pasteur in Paris.
据法国巴斯德研究所的最新研究发现，在法国暴发的新冠疫情，并不是由中国输入的病例所引起的，而是源于一种来源不明的当地病毒株。
Genetic analysis showed that the dominant types of the viral strains in France belonged to a clade – or group with a common ancestor – that did not come from China or Italy, the earliest hotspot in Europe.
基因分析表明，法国境内的新冠病毒株，来自同一个“种系分枝（进化枝）”——一种有着共同“祖先（进化源头）”的种系——而这一进化枝并非来自中国或意大利，后者正是欧洲最早的疫情暴发地区。
“The French outbreak has been mainly seeded by one or several variants of this clade … we can infer that the virus was silently circulating in France in February,” said researchers led by Dr Sylvie van der Werf and Etienne Simon-Loriere in a non-peer reviewed paper released on bioRxiv.org last week.
以西尔维·范德沃夫博士和西蒙·洛希耶尔博士为首的研究人员，上周在bioRxiv.org上发布论文指出：“在法国境内暴发的新冠疫情，主要由这种进化枝的一种或几种变异体所引起……我们可以推断出，该病毒曾于2月份在法国悄无声息地传播。”
The Covid-19 pandemic has infected more than 128,000 people in France and caused more than 23,000 deaths.
法国目前已有超过128000人确诊感染新冠病毒，死亡病例超过23000人。
France detected the virus in late January, before any other country in Europe. A few patients with a travel history that included China’s Hubei province were sampled on January 24 and tested positive.
法国在1月下旬发现了新冠病毒，比欧洲的任何其他国家都要早。1月24日，一些曾到访中国湖北省的人员，在抽样检测时被发现结果呈阳性。
The French government took quick and decisive measures to trace contacts of the infected people and shut down the chance of further infection.
法国政府采取了迅速而果断的措施，追踪感染病例的密切接触者，及时切断了感染进一步扩散的可能性。
However, these strains were not found in patients tested after the initial imported cases, suggesting “the quarantine imposed on the initial Covid-19 cases in France appears to have prevented local transmission”, the researchers said.
然而，巴斯德研究所指出，最初一批输入病例被发现后，法国境内的病毒检测并未发现上述本地病毒株，表明“法国早期的隔离措施，似乎阻止了本地传播”。
The Pasteur institute collected samples from more than 90 other patients across France and found the strains all came from one genetic line. Strains following this unique path of evolution had so far only been detected in Europe and the Americas.
目前，巴斯德研究所收集了法国各地超过90名确诊患者的样本，发现所有的病毒株均来自于同一条基因链。但迄今为止，遵循该基因链独特进化道路的病毒株，仅在欧洲和美国被发现。
The earliest sample in the French clade was collected on February 19 from a patient who had no history of travel and no known contact with returned travelers.
法国本地病毒株的样本，最早于2月19日从一位既没有旅行史，也没有与任何境外返回人士有接触的病例身上采集而来。
Several patients had recently travelled to other European countries, the United Arab Emirates, Madagascar and Egypt but there was no direct evidence that they contracted the disease in these destinations.
一些病患此前曾至欧洲其它国家，以及阿联酋、马达加斯加和埃及，但没有直接证据表明，患者是在这些地区接触了病毒。
To the researchers’ surprise, some of the later strains collected were genetically older – or closer to the ancestral root – than the first sample in this clade.
令研究人员惊讶的是，一些后期于病患身上采集到的病毒株，在基因层面上比法国本地病毒进化枝的第一个样本更古老——或者说更接近进化源头。
A possible explanation, according to the authors, was that local transmission had been occurring in France for some time without being detected by health authorities.
研究者认为，一种可能的解释是，新冠病毒在被法国卫生部门发现之前，已经在当地传播了一段时间了。
The French government may have missed detecting the transmission. According to the researchers, a large proportion of those patients might have had mild symptoms or none at all.
法国政府可能在一段时间内，根本未能发现病毒的传播。研究者指出，相当比例的早期患者症状轻微，甚至根本没有病征。
The researchers also found that three sequences later sampled in Algeria were closely related to those in France, suggesting that travelers from France might have introduced the virus to the African country and caused an outbreak.
研究人员还发现，后期在阿尔及利亚采集的三个病毒基因序列，与法国本地病毒的基因序列高度吻合，表明来自法国的旅行者可能在此前某个时刻，将病毒传播至阿尔及利亚，导致了当地新冠疫情的暴发。
Benjamin Neuman, professor and chair of biological sciences with the Texas A&M University-Texarkana, said the French strains might have come from Belgium, where some sequences most closely related to the original strain from China were clustered.
德克萨斯农工大学特克萨卡纳分校生物学负责人本杰明·纽曼教授认为，法国本地病毒株可能来自比利时，一些与中国病毒株高度相近的病毒株基因序列，正是在比利时一带集中被发现。
“Since the earliest European strains of [the coronavirus] Sars-CoV-2 seem to be associated with Belgium, the idea that the virus spread from Belgium to both Italy and France at around the same time seems plausible, as this paper contends,” he said.
“由于最早的欧洲SARS-CoV-2（新冠病毒）似乎就与比利时有关，因此该病毒大约是在同一时间由比利时扩散至意大利和法国，这种观点似乎是合理的，正如论文所主张的那样”，纽曼教授表示。
France is the latest in a growing number of countries and areas where no direct link between China and local outbreaks could be established.
越来越多的国家和地区发现，本地疫情的暴发与中国无法建立起直接联系，法国正是最新的一个。
The dominant strains in Russia and Australia, for instance, came from Europe and the United States, respectively, according to some studies.
例如，研究表明，俄罗斯和澳大利亚的主要病毒菌株分别来自欧洲和美国。
These findings have drawn fire from some politicians who have tried to deflect domestic anger over their handling of the crisis by blaming China.
上述发现引起了一些政治人物的不满，这些人正试图通过指责中国来转移国内对其应对疫情不力的愤怒。
US President Donald Trump lashed out on social media after two separate teams in the US found the strains devastating New York came from Europe.
当美国的两个独立研究团队发现，肆虐纽约的病毒株实际上来自欧洲后，美国总统唐纳德·特朗普对此在社交媒体上进行了大肆抨击。
“So now the Fake News @nytimes is tracing the CoronaVirus origins back to Europe, NOT China. This is a first!” he tweeted on April 11, referring to a story about the studies in the The New York Times’ science section.
“所以，假新闻@《纽约时报》现在正在将新冠病毒的起源追溯至欧洲，而不是中国。这真是打娘胎里来头一次!”4月11日，特朗普在推特上公开针对《纽约时报》科学版上关于这些研究的报道进行打压。
The findings also highlight the difficulties governments face in tracing the source of coronavirus outbreaks.
调查结果还凸显出，各国政府在追踪新冠病毒暴发源头方面所面临的种种困难。
Less-developed countries may never know where their strains came from due to inadequate testing and sequencing capability.
由于病毒检测和测序能力不足，欠发达国家可能永远不知道导致当地疫情暴发的病毒菌株来自哪里。
India, for example, has released the genetic sequence of fewer than 40 samples to the public so far, a small number considering its huge population.
以印度为例，迄今为止，该国仅公布了不到40个样本的基因序列，考虑到印度庞大的人口数量，这无疑只是一个很小的数目。
Most of the strains sampled in 35 early cases came from clades that could be traced to Italy and Iran, with only a few from China, according to a recent study. But researchers were not able to track further because of the lack of data.
根据最新研究显示，从35例印度早期病例身上采集的病毒株，多数来自可追溯至意大利和伊朗的进化株，而来自中国的只有很少一部分。但由于缺乏数据，研究人员无法对病毒株进一步溯源。
A scientist on the study, Dr Mukesh Thakur, of the Zoological Survey of India, said it was too early to rule out China as the source of outbreaks in India because the number of samples at hand was limited.
这项报告的研究者，印度动物学调查的穆克什·塔库尔博士认为，现在就排除中国是印度新冠疫情的暴发源头，还为时过早，因为现有的样本数量有限。
A 20-year-old student studying medicine in Wuhan, for instance, might have come in contact with many people on the way home before she was tested positive on January 30.
举例来说，一名在武汉学习医学的20岁印度学生，在1月30日于印度被发现检测结果呈阳性之前，可能已经在回家的路上接触了很多人。
Thakur said local media reported that the Indian government quarantined 3,500 people possibly linked to three positive cases imported from Wuhan.
塔库尔表示，据当地媒体报道，印度政府已经隔离了3500名与3起武汉输入病例有关的人士。
“God knows how many of them tested positive in the subsequent stages,” Thakur said in an email response to the Post’s queries on Tuesday.
塔库尔周二在回复《华盛顿邮报》的邮件是称，“天知道多少人会在之后的核酸检测中结果呈阳性”。
Some prominent scientists, including Francis Collins, director of the US National Institutes of Health, said the virus might have been spreading quietly in humans for years, or even decades, without causing a detectable outbreak.
包括美国国立卫生研究院院长弗朗西斯柯林斯在内的一些知名科学家表示，这种病毒可能已经在人类中悄然传播了数年甚至数十年，但并没有引起可察觉的暴发。
The virus had thus adapted well to the human body. Some genes regulating its binding to host cells were similar, or even identical, to those found in some other highly infectious human viruses, such as HIV and Ebola.
因此，该病毒已经很好地适应了人体。一些调节其与宿主细胞结合的基因，与其他一些具有高度传染性人类病毒，如在艾滋病毒和埃博拉病毒中发现的基因相似，甚至完全相同。
According to some estimates, the ancestor of Sars-CoV-2, the virus causing Covid-19, might have left bats between 50 and 70 years ago. A recent study by a team of geneticists in Oxford University estimated the first outbreak of the current pandemic could have occurred as early as September last year.
有估计认为，新冠病毒（SARS-CoV-2）的进化源头，也就是最初导致新冠肺炎（COVID-19）的病毒本体，可能在50到70年前就离开了蝙蝠。牛津大学遗传学家团队近日进行的一项研究预估，目前的新冠病毒大流行，其首次暴发最早可能发生于去年9月。
They found that the dominant strains circulating in China and Asia were genetically younger than some popular strains in the United States.
他们发现，中国及亚洲的主要病毒株，在基因层面上比美国的本地病毒株更为“年轻”，换言之，中国病毒株是由美国病毒株演化而来。
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发表于 2020-4-30 23:40:30
