The director of the World Health Organization (WHO) announced Monday that the first investigations in China to determine the zoonotic origin of the virus that causes COVID-19, have been completed, reported The Globe Post.
At a virtual press conference, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced that “The WHO advanced team that visited China has now completed its mission of laying the groundwork for further joint efforts to identify the origins of the virus”. He added that“As a result of these efforts, experts from WHO and China drew up terms of reference for the studies and work program of an international team led by WHO.”
On July 7, WHO announced that an advanced team of two members, an epidemiologist and an animal health expert, would travel to China to work with local scientists to “Prepare scientific plans to identify the zoonotic source of the SARS-COV-2 virus.” “ This conference thus marks the end of this first part of the research.
Theories of animal origin
Currently, it is well known that the COVID-19 virus originated in Wuhan, a city in Hubei Province, China, but any more specific origin is still unknown or highly disputed. At the start of the pandemic, Wuhan health officials claimed the virus was coming from a popular seafood market in the city, although of the first 41 patients hospitalized with the virus in Wuhan, 13 had no link to the seafood market. It is widely accepted that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is of animal origin, making the livestock and seafood market a good candidate for the origin of the virus.
A dominant theory is that the virus actually originated in bats and jumped to humans. It is not known whether a human could have been directly infected by a bat or whether the virus passed from bats to another animal species before being transferred to humans. A Chinese state news agency announced in January that 33 of 585 animal samples tested at the Wuhan cattle market were positive for SARS-CoV-2, although they did not announce which animals were. tested positive.
Other unfounded theories
In April, US President Donald Trump claimed he had evidence to support a theory that the virus was created in a laboratory in China and accidentally or intentionally released to the public. His statement contradicts US intelligence officials who explained that the theory was one of many they were investigating and that it was still neither conclusive nor proven.
“The majority of opinions currently expressed are that the virus is natural, it was organic”Defense Secretary Mark Esper told NBC News in April. Most scientists and coronavirus experts now say it is extremely unlikely that the virus is not naturally occurring.
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