On Tuesday, a team of researchers from the World Health Organization (WHO) said the new coronavirus, called SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, likely originated in animals and spread to humans.
The team also dismissed the hypothesis that the virus was leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China.
The WHO researchers have been working in Wuhan for the past month to discover the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. They presented their findings during a virtual news briefing at the Hilton Wuhan Optics Valley hotel in Wuhan.
Lead researcher Peter Ben Embarek said, “In terms of understanding what happened in the early days of December 2019, did we change dramatically the picture we had beforehand? I don’t think so.”
Ben Embarek, who is a Danish scientist and Programme Manager at WHO specializing in food safety and animal disease, added, “Did we improve our understanding? Did we add details to that story? Absolutely.”
He told reporters that the virus likely transmitted from animals to humans, but added more studies are needed to be sure. The team is unsure which animal passed the virus to humans, but they are considering several species, according to Medscape Medical News.
The WHO team visited labs, hospitals, and markets, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Huanan Seafood Market, and the Wuhan CDC lab. They found no evidence of outbreaks in Wuhan before December 2019. However, they found widespread virus circulation outside of the Huanan Seafood Market during that time.
The WHO said it might take more time to find out how the outbreak started.
Interestingly, the team dismissed the idea that the virus leaked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which triggered the pandemic. They told reporters that they have conducted “very diligent research” on this hypothesis and concluded that it is “unlikely.”
Ben Embarek explained, “The laboratory incident hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain the introduction of the virus into the human population. Therefore, it is not in the hypotheses that we will suggest for future studies.”
The team will now focus on how the virus circulated in animals before affecting humans.
Previously, the WHO suggested that the coronavirus started in bats, jumped to another species, and then to humans. Initially, most cases were linked to the Huanan Seafood Market and experts thought the virus came from animals that were sold at the market.
However, China said animal samples from the market suggested the spread of the virus, but it did not start there.
The WHO team confirmed that although the outbreak emerged at the market, they could not determine how the virus arrived there. The article was published Tuesday on Medscape Medical News.
