Baric Transcribed Interview (Redacted) — page 21

DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com DR. BARIC: Let me step back. So historically they published a paper showing that this drug combination might be effective against emerging coronavirus infections, using SARS as their model. We did a head-to-head comparison of remdesivir versus this drug, and had submitted it to Nature Communications for publication. And that was in 2019, and the paper was going to be published on January 10, 2020. On the 7th or so, or on the first call, they wanted me to share that paper with them so that they could evaluate what they were going to do for treating their COVID-19 patients. MS. SALAZAR: At NIH. DR. BARIC: No. China. We didn't have any cases on January 7th, 2020, in the U.S. MS. SALAZAR: I just want to make sure I understand. You received information from the Chinese about the SARS16 COVID-2 outbreak. DR. BARIC: I told you that. I think it was around the 4th, that told me it was a coronavirus related to SARS, that was 78 percent identical. MS. SALAZAR: Okay. DR. BARIC: That means basically it has 6,000 nucleotides. So if you think about a tree, SARS coronavirus is on one branch of that tree, and SARS-2 is on a totally different branch of that tree. MS. SALAZAR: Okay. And so your conversations with