Where did the Covid-19 coronavirus come from, and how did it begin infecting people?
At a news conference on Tuesday in Wuhan, China, scientists from the World Health Organization (WHO) pointed to probable answers to those questions, while saying it’s “extremely unlikely” that the virus somehow escaped from a virology lab there.
Instead, they said, it probably jumped to humans from animals, possibly in a so-called “wet market,” where live animals were sold for food. A spokesperson for China’s National Health Commission said transmission “likely occured in other areas of Wuhan at the time,” Axios reports.
China has also suggested that frozen products from both wild and farmed animals, which were also sold at the wet market, could have been a source of the virus.
“The possible path from whatever original animal species … could have taken a very long and convoluted path involving also movements across borders,” said Peter Embarek, who led the team in its nearly month-long visit to Wuhan, according to the Reuters news agency.
“Embarek said the initial findings suggest the most likely pathway the virus followed was from a bat to another animal and then to humans, adding that would require further research,” reports the Associated Press.
“Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist on the team, said that some animals at the market were susceptible or suspected to be susceptible to the virus, including rabbits and bamboo rats,” the AP says. “And some could be traced to farms or traders in regions that are home to the bats that carry the closest related virus to the one that causes Covid-19.”
Members of the WHO team visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology, just nine miles from the wet market, earlier this month.
The Wuhan Institute has collected many virus samples, leading to unlikely allegations that it may have been the source of the original outbreak, whether on purpose or accidentally.
Former President Donald Trump suggested just that on several occasions, repeatedly referring to the Covid coronavirus as “the China virus.”
“But experts now consider the possibility of such a leak so improbable that it will not be suggested as an avenue of future study,” Embarek said at the news conference, according to the AP.
Tuesday’s news conference climaxed a WHO mission seeking evidence of the origin of the coronavirus outbreak, which the Chinese government delayed for a year by refusing to let international investigators to enter the country.