A leading American expert in influenza viruses discovered that early sequences of the novel coronavirus (CCP virus) genome were deleted at the request of researchers in China, which was confirmed by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH, which hasn’t yet responded to The Epoch Times’ request for comment, told the Wall Street Journal that it deleted the sequences after a Chinese researcher requested the U.S. agency to do so, explaining that the researcher had submitted the sequences three months earlier. The statement said the scientist wanted the data removed in June 2020 because an updated version of the sequences was uploaded to another unspecified database. “Submitting investigators hold the rights to their data and can request withdrawal of the data,” the NIH said in a statement to the paper. Professor Jesse Bloom, a COVID-19 researcher from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, wrote in a non-peer-reviewed …