As G7 countries ramp up calls for a 'phase two' investigation into the origins of COVID-19, here's what experts are saying about the likely origins of the pandemic.
, the WHO team concluded the most likely scenario was the virus jumped from bats into humans via an intermediate animal - a process known as “zoonosis”. “Plenty of other viruses have gone down this pathway before, including the original SARS and MERS, which are coronaviruses that have come across into humans,” he said.
“We have lots of evidence that spillovers happen like this all the time. Most of the time, they probably happen and don’t go any further - they’re the end of that transmission chain,” he told SBS News. Marion Koopmans and Peter Ben Embarek of the WHO team farewell their Chinese counterpart Liang Wannianin in Wuhan, China, 9 February 2021.Chinese authorities reported many of the first cases of COVID-19 occurred in a wet market in Wuhan.
While researchers have some leads supporting this theory, researchers are yet to pinpoint the animal intermediary responsible for transferring the virus to humans. "As of today, the US intelligence community has coalesced around two likely scenarios but has not reached a definitive conclusion on this question," he said."Transparency matters across the board. And I think the idea that, for example, one of the things I raised - and others raised, I wasn't the only one who raised this piece of it - is that we don't know," he said.
They also followed reports, citing US intelligence, that three researchers from the Wuhan institute were hospitalised with a flu-like illness in November 2019, one month before China reported the first COVID-19 case. “That shouldn’t have a bearing on how credible or not credible the theory is, but it has been politicised - initially by Donald Trump, and also by those who didn’t like Donald Trump.”
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