The COVID-19 pandemic may be over, but questions about its origins still plague scientists. There are many theories about the origin of SARS-CoV-2, but no solid evidence to support any of them.
One of the biggest questions posed by the COVID-19 pandemic is: where did the virus come from? Three years on, as the world struggles to contain the disease, experts still haven’t found an answer to this question.
Early in the pandemic, it was widely believed that SARS-CoV-2 came from bats. But there is no evidence to support this.All that is said to be clear is that COVID-19 is zoonotic, meaning it is a human disease of animal origin Bat Conservation Foundation.
While the idea that the virus originated in a bat species doesn’t seem far-fetched, scientists believe there must have been an intermediate species that brought the virus from bats closer to humans. By mutating, the virus was able to spread from person to person, causing a global health crisis that began in late 2019.
Another theory claims that carelessness in China’s Wuhan laboratory may have contributed to the spread of the novel coronavirus. The idea gained more attention when several news outlets reported on the lab’s work on bat viruses.
There is also a story about how the virus started spreading from infected wild animals sold in Chinese markets. But then again, no one has been able to find hard evidence to back this up.
Scientists have struggled to find conclusive evidence that would point to the geographic and biological origins of COVID-19, prompting Reuters This week’s takeaway is that even when the pandemic is over, we may never know where SARS-CoV-2 came from.
Aside from the lack of evidence, there is also the question of how China censors scientific data related to the rest of the world. By withholding vital information, the rest of the world will be left to rely on hard-to-prove guesswork.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “We continue to call on China to be transparent in sharing data and to conduct the necessary investigations and share the results. Understanding how the pandemic started remains an ethical and scientific imperative.” March said.
Published by Medicaldaily.com