Since the beginning of the pandemic covid in december 2019The origin of the virus has been the subject of intense global debate. As the disease spread rapidly around the world, many theories emerged about how the SARS-CoV-2 virus began infecting humans. Two of the leading hypotheses are that the virus originated at an animal market in Wuhan, Chinawhere they were sold bats and other wildlifeor that there was a possible Wuhan Institute of Virology lab leakHowever, nearly four years after the start of the pandemic, the true origin of the infection remains a mystery and the international community continues to search for answers.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has rekindled the controversy over the lack of transparency of the Chinese authorities on the origin of the virus causing the covid-19 pandemic, ensuring that if they are not more transparent, The beginning of this health crisis will remain a mystery.
“Unless China shares its data, the origins of COVID-19 will remain completely unknown,” the WHO director-general said at his weekly press conference. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“China’s collaboration “It is absolutely crucial to find the origins, including information on the first cases, on the Huanan market (where these first infections were recorded) and on the work done in the Wuhan laboratories,” said Tedros, who warned that even if there is complete data “all hypotheses are up in the air.”
During the pandemic, the coronavirus was considered to have accidentally escaped from a Chinese biosafety laboratory, which WHO experts who visited the Asian country to investigate the origins of the pandemic said was the least likely of the hypotheses but not completely disposable.
The controversy over the origins of the virus has pitted China and countries like China against each other for years. USAwhose authorities even asked the WHO to investigate as a priority the possibility that the pathogen escaped from a laboratory, which provoked the indignation of the Chinese communist regime.
Tedros has put the issue back on the table with the publication of a guide for Member States know what questions to study when analyzing the origins of new pathogens that could cause epidemics or pandemics.
“It is very difficult to understand when, where and how pandemics and epidemics start, but it is scientifically imperative to try to avoid others in the future,” Tedros stressed.
Huanan Market and Bats
One of the first theories proposed was that the SARS-CoV-2 virus jumped from an animal to humans at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan. A wide variety of wild animals were sold at the market, including batswhich are known reservoirs of the coronavirus. Scientists noted that a coronavirus similar to SARS-CoV-2 had previously been identified in bats in Yunnan Province in southern China, leading to the hypothesis that the virus could have jumped from bats to another animal and then to humans.
This theory has been supported by genetic studies which showed that this infection shares a high degree of similarity with other coronaviruses found in bats. Furthermore, in previous outbreaks, such as SARS in 2002-2003, the virus was shown to be transmitted from bats to humans via an intermediary animal, the civet cat. Therefore, the natural origin of covid in bats and its transmission to humans through an intermediary in an animal market has been considered a plausible explanation by many scientists.
The Laboratory Escape Theory
However, another theory has emerged: the possibility that the virus accidentally escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virologya lab that has been studying coronaviruses for years. According to this theory, the virus could have been studied in the lab and, due to a biosafety error, infected one of the employees or was released into the environment, triggering the pandemic.
This hypothesis has been the subject of controversy and speculation, partly because of the lack of transparency at the start of the pandemic and the reluctance of Chinese authorities to share detailed data. Although there is no conclusive evidence that the virus was created in a laboratory or escaped from one, the theory has been supported by some scientists and politicians, who have called for further investigation.
