In November 2015, UNC scientists published a research paper detailing how they had created a lab-made hybrid coronavirus with the potential to infect people. Their experiments involved inserting part of a coronavirus called SHC014-CoV found in Chinese horseshoe bats into a SARS virus to see if the lab-made hybrid virus — called a chimera — could efficiently infect human cells.
There have been mouse bites and spills and other mishaps during experiments involving genetically altered coronaviruses at a high-security lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
