⁶DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH (Northern Ireland)
Castle Buildings
Stormont
Belfast

Notice to the Principal is Notice to the Agent; Notice to the Agent is Notice to the Principle

Notice of Freedom of Information Act 2000 request.

Dear Michael McBride and Robin Swann

Full, accurate and complete disclosure of SARSCOV-2 virus records

Please provide a full, accurate and complete list of records held within your office, and or under your authority, describing the isolation of a SARS-COV-2 virus, directly taken from a symptomatic patient of COVID-19 where the sample was not first combined with any other source of genetic material (not limited but by way of example monkey kidney cells, aka vero cells, liver cancer cells) thereby eliminating contamination as a possible alternative source of sampling.

Please note isolation is used in the normally understood meaning of the word – the act of
separating a thing from another.

I am not referring, and hence not requesting, to isolation meaning the culture of something else, the performance of an amplification test (eg PCR test which only detect mRNA or DNA) or the sequencing of “something”.

If any records match the above description and are available to the public elsewhere, please provide enough information so that I may identify and access each record with certainty (i.e. title, author(s), date, journal, and weblink or location where the public may access it).

I remind you full, accurate and complete disclosure is required.

Yours faithfully, Phillip Evans.