New research on the origins of the COVID-19 outbreak puts another nail in the coffin of the laboratory escape theory. That theory states that the virus was created or studied in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, and then accidentally escaped or released intentionally.
The New Study Shows That The Virus’ Path Across China To Wuhan Reiembles That of the Earlier Sars Epidemic That Started in 2002, In Terms of Time, Distance, and Route, They report In the newspaper Cell. Demonstrating its origins and travel route essentially disputes that the virus appeared out of nowhere in Wuhan.
“The various iterations of the laboratory can theory assume that there is something different and inexplicable about the emergence of COVID-19 compared to the emergency SARS,” says Joel Wertheim, professor at the San Diego Faculty of Medicine of the University of California, and author of the document. “There is nothing unique how far had to travel Sars-Cov-2 to emerge in Wuhan. The Sars virus basically performed the same task through the zoonotic emergency. Therefore, there is no need to invoke a ‘laboratory escape’ to explain the geography of the SARS-COV-2 emergency.”
Covid-19 outbreak
Several previous studies have played the “laboratory escape theory” using different methods. One 2022 PapeGenetically reborn the first human cases known with a particular section of the wholesale market of Huanan seafood containing many wild animals and where the virus had also been detected.
Other He showed that two different lineages of the virus existed before a different variant finally infected humans. TO third He linked the first versions of the virus with multiple animals in the Wuhan market.
Read more: What the coronavirus does to the body
Origin of the virus
The new study essentially identifies the origin of the virus west of China or north of Laos several years before infecting humans. They determined that the 1,500 miles more or less between those points and Wuhan were probably too far so that the virus did it within that period of time by its normal method: “hooking a trip” in its main host, the horseshoe bat.
Therefore, the virus was probably spread through a faster method, most likely through the trade of wildlife animals, in the same way that the 2002 virus traveled. In fact, there is nothing particularly unique in the Sars virus or about the way they traveled and finally found their paths in humans, the researchers say.
“We see this pattern repeatedly: humans in contact with animals and pathogens that circulate with each other, which leads to spills and sometimes a devastating degree of human diseases,” says Jonathan Pekar, a UCSD researcher.
Read more: Could we be living with Covid-19 forever?
Covid-19 ancestors monitoring
There are some Covid-19 mysteries. Researchers are still trying to locate their ancestors (Wertheimer says that scientists are approaching, perhaps about two years away). And they have not yet resolved a key element at the entrance of the virus into humans.
“We have not yet nailed the identity of the hypothetical intermediate host species that united the gap between bats and humans,” says Wertheim. “We have candidates. But unfortunately, we may never know.”
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Before joining Discover, Paul Smaglik spent more than 20 years as a scientific journalist, specializing in the United States Life Science Policy and global scientific career problems. He began his career in newspapers, but changed to scientific journals. His work has appeared in publications that include scientists, sciences, nature and American scientific.
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