There are bats in the border regions of southern and southwest China that are home to other coronaviruses that already have the capacity to pass to humans, warned a Chinese scientist, Shi Zhengli, of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
According to the expert, close relatives of SARS-CoV-2 (responsible for the covid-19 disease) circulate in nature and “we should not only look for them in China, but also in countries in South Asia”, said the scientist who studies the coronaviruses of bats.
The statement was made during an online lecture organized by the French medical and veterinary academies. The World Health Organization (WHO) and medical journal The Lancet are currently investigating the origins of the pandemic, a year after the outbreak officially began.
Recently, a group of Chinese researchers argued that the new coronavirus may have appeared not in your country but in India, or a list of seven other countries. The team of scientists argues that one of the hypotheses is that the virus appeared in the summer of 2019, in a heat wave in neighboring India.
It is not the first time that Chinese authorities have “pointed the finger” at another country. However, the virologist was not suggesting that China be eliminated from the investigations, she just warned that the investigations should also be carried out in other countries.
The ‘natural reservoir’ of SARS-CoV-2 is thought to be bats and although Shi Zhengli said the virus was most likely transmitted to another animal before reaching humans, that animal (the intermediate host) has yet to be identified.
It is also unclear how long the virus may have circulated in this animal or in humans before it was detected at the end of last year. The virologist said she could have been on another animal “for a long time”.
The WHO is still looking for the source of covid-19 in China, but considers it “highly speculative” to say that the new coronavirus did not have its origin in the country.
– –
