An international expert mission to Wuhan, China, concluded in a report seen yesterday that COVID-19 likely first passed to humans from a bat through an intermediary animal, with investigators all but ruling out a laboratory leak.
The intermediate host hypothesis was deemed “likely to very likely,” while the theory that the coronavirus escaped from a laboratory was seen as “extremely unlikely,” according to a copy of the long-awaited final report obtained by Agence France-Presse before its official release.
As nations rush to vaccinate and stem the spread of COVID-19, the mystery at the heart of the pandemic — how the coronavirus first jumped to humans — remains unsolved.
Photo: AFP
The report from the international mission to Wuhan has therefore been keenly anticipated ever since the expert team left China more than a month ago.
Delays in the publication of the findings, drafted in collaboration with the team’s Chinese counterparts, had been blamed on coordination and translation issues, even as a diplomatic tug-of-war raged in the background over the contents.
During a news conference in Wuhan on Feb. 9 at the end of the mission, the experts and their Chinese counterparts made clear that they could not yet draw any firm conclusions, but they said they had worked to rank a number of hypotheses according to how likely they were.
Experts believe that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 originally came from bats.
One theory examined was that the coronavirus jumped directly from bats to humans. The final report determined that this scenario was “possible to likely.”
A more likely scenario, the report found, was that the coronavirus had first jumped from bats to another animal, which in turn infected humans.
“Although the closest related viruses have been found in bats, the evolutionary distance between these bat viruses and SARS-CoV-2 is estimated to be several decades, suggesting a missing link,” the report says.
“The scenario including introduction through an intermediary host was considered to be likely to very likely,” it says, although it did not conclude which animal might have first allowed the coronavirus to jump to humans.
The report did not rule out transmission through frozen food — Beijing’s favored theory — since the virus appears to be able survive at freezing temperatures, saying that “introduction via cold/food chain products is considered possible.”
The report also examined the idea of a laboratory leak from, for instance, the Wuhan Institute of Virology — a theory promoted by former US president Donald Trump.
It says that there was no record of any virus resembling SARS-CoV-2 in any laboratory before December 2019, and stressed high safety levels at the laboratories in Wuhan.
“A laboratory origin of the pandemic was considered to be extremely unlikely,” the report says.
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