February 11, 2021

‘Major Stones Unturned’: COVID Origin Search Must Continue After WHO Report, Say Scientists-Nature

Scientists say that the hunt for the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic must continue, after a World Health Organization (WHO) team’s visit to China produced no answers to key questions about how the coronavirus started infecting people. At a press briefing on 9 February in Wuhan, China, members of the WHO team reported conclusions from their month-long investigation into the origin of the coronavirus, which was first reported as cases of ‘viral pneumonia’ in Wuhan in December 2019. The researchers largely discounted the controversial theory that the virus accidentally leaked from a laboratory, and suggested that SARS-CoV-2 probably first passed to people from an animal — already a leading hypothesis among researchers. But the team also offered two hypotheses promoted by the Chinese government and media: that that the virus, or its most recent ancestor, might have come from an animal outside China, and that once it was circulating in people, it could have spread on frozen wildlife and other cold packaged goods. Nature, 02/11/2021