Coronavirus not lab-made: WHO-Chinese Global Study
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COVID-19 not likely to be developed in laboratories, says a global study. The WHO-China joint team has found that origin of coronavirus is 'extremely unlikely' to happen in a lab.
Liang Wannian, team leader of the Chinese side of the WHO-China joint team stated at a press briefing on Wednesday that the COVID-19 introduction through an intermediate host is 'likely to very likely' while the initial outbreak through frozen food, packaging and cold-chain products is 'possible,' based on prevailing data and evidence.
Most related studies show that coronavirus is more linked to viruses in bats and pangolins, however, there's not enough clarity to rule as SARS-CoV-2 virus in bats as the direct progenitor. Liang noted that the place a virus is initially reported is not necessarily the originating point of the virus and that it generally takes a long time to identify the origin of a new infectious disease and have the findings accepted worldwide.
"The high susceptibility of mink and cats suggests the potential of additional species of animals (belonging to the mustelid or felid family, as well as other species) as potential reservoirs," according to the study.
Shutting down the allegations and rumours, Liang pointed out that the supposition that China did not share original data on the origins of the novel coronavirus does not make sense as experts have been researching to get information. There is no difference between the data possessed by Chinese experts and foreign experts.
During the meeting, the experts suggested scientists worldwide to do more research in different countries and regions on animal virus hosts and advance their study of the role of cold chains and relevant products in the transmission of the virus.
"The findings suggest that the laboratory incident hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain introduction of the virus into the human population, and therefore is not a hypothesis that implies to suggest future studies into our work, to support our future work, into the understanding of the origin of the virus", said Peter Ben Embarek from WHO, last month, at a conference in Wuhan.
Approximately 129,801,653 coronavirus cases have been reported worldwide, including 2,832,740 deaths, as of Thursday (April 1), as per worldometer stats.
