Scientist says ‘we may never know’ the origins of COVID-19, but research must continue

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted scientists around the world to determine the origins of the respiratory virus, with President Joe Biden even ordering US intelligence agencies to report on their own investigations.

In the midst of the ongoing search for the origins of SARS-CoV-2, some scientists have realized that despite their best efforts, the world may never know the cause of the epidemic, Second o The Wall Street Journal.

Linfa Wang, a bat virologist and associate professor in the Emerging Infectious Diseases Program at Duke-NUS College of Medicine in Singapore, believes that mammals are a group of potential disease spreaders. Wang believes that research into the origin of SARS-like and other deadly viruses could serve as a “cautionary example”.

SARS began as an outbreak in China. At the time, the Chinese government was criticized for not sharing information with the public and the World Health Organization (WHO) quickly enough. Bats were suspicious at the time, as now with COVID-19.

Driven by searching for a Conclusive evidence for this theoryWang was a member of the 2003 World Health Organization mission to investigate SARS and later collaborated with virus researchers in China for more than a decade.

Attention turned to a group of horseshoe bats occupying a cave in Yunnan Province. Cave floor guano was analyzed for viruses, while blood, saliva and urine samples were collected from captured bats.

According to the team, the bats that inhabited the same cave had infected each other with a series of different viral strains. After they mixed, they created a SARS-like virus that was transmitted to humans.

They also issued a warning that other SARS-like coronaviruses capable of infecting people are circulating among bats in the area, making another SARS-like epidemic a real possibility.

However, insofar as their research was applicable at the time, the conclusions cited were as close as possible to finding the origins of the disease.

“So far there is no evidence beyond doubt. We have not found a bat that is the source of SARS in humans,” Wang said.

political obstacles

Wang was quoted as saying that the ongoing search for the origins of SARS-CoV-2 is mired in politics. Referring to China’s criticism of the delay in entering a WHO-led team that traveled there in January 2020 to investigate the outbreak, he said:

In January, the experts Foreigners traveled to Wuhan, where they examined laboratory, hospitals and markets for evidence of SARS-CoV-2 origins. The World Health Organization then compiled a report, saying that the new coronavirus leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, the first incubator for COVID-19, is highly unlikely.

The report, released in March, said that the new virus was most likely transmitted to humans from bats through an intermediate host, however, recently, the United States and other countries called for a second phase of studies to explore the two main hypotheses. Caused by a laboratory leak or jumped to humans from infected animals.

The Biden government in May ordered that it be US intelligence agencies Report the origin of COVID-19 in 90 days. Although the US government and politicians have pushed their political agenda by accusing China of the so-called “lab leak theory” targeting many global scientists and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), most scientists have expressed their rejection of this theory.

Your statement came after Report From the Wall Street Journal allegedly three lab researchers were hospitalized with flu-like symptoms in November 2019. Anderson praised the lab as having the highest biosafety rating.

Given the many inconclusive results throughout his research, Wang is determined not to give up.

“We may never know,” he said.