Coronavirus Covid-19: did we miss the opportunity to avoid it 7 years ago?

In 2013, Zheng-Li Shi and colleagues of the Wuhan Institute of Virology identify in a bat of them coronavirus very close to SARS-CoV, at the origin ofepidemic from 2002-2003. CoV-WIV1, in particular, is then considered dangerous because it has a enzyme converter (ACE2), which serves as a receiver for the virus in humans. It turns out today that this virus shares 96.2% of its genome with SARS-CoV-2, which is behind the current epidemic.

Several warnings have been issued since. In 2015, researchers from the University of North Carolina publish in the journal Nature Medicine a study entitled: ” SARS-like bat coronavirus cluster threatens to emerge in humans “. A year later, in 2016, the same team launched a new alert and stated in the review PNAS that the famous WIV1 virus has the ability to directly infect humans and spread by human-to-human transmission. The study is also titled ” WIV1-CoV virus similar to SARS ready to emerge in humans “. In 2018, a other Chinese study signals the presence ofantibody virus bat SARS-CoV type in several residents in Yunnan province, theepicenter of the Covid-19 epidemic. So many warnings that should probably have been taken more seriously.

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