A Chinese scientist asked the NIH to eliminate the sequences after submitting them three months prior, the NIH told the Wall Street Journal. “Submitting investigators hold the rights to their data and can request withdrawal of the data,” the NIH said in a statement. According to the NIH statement, the researcher asked that the sequences be removed from the NIH database because they had been updated and were to be rerouted to another database, the name of which remains unknown. The paper mentions the use of an advanced sequencing technology to detect SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID.