Explosive Study Unveils the True Origin of COVID—Hinting It Might Not Have Started in China

• FURTHER READING: Lab in Wuhan connected to COVID-19 outbreak now conducting fresh research

U.S. scientists think they have identified when and where COVID-19 initially appeared, suggesting it may not have originated as previously thought. China .

Researchers from the University of California Researchers from San Diego have reportedly discovered evidence suggesting that SARS-CoV-2, which triggers COVID-19, may have begun evolving in bat populations as far back as 2012, across an area stretching from western China to northern Laos.

They examined over 100 coronaviruses discovered in horseshoe bats, comparing these viruses with both SARS-CoV-2 and its predecessor SARS-CoV-1, which caused the 2002 epidemic.

This enabled them to construct what they consider the most complete depiction of the viruses' evolutionary timelines.

The research indicates that the viruses most closely related to SARS-CoV-2 appeared between five and seven years prior to the outbreak of COVID. Wuhan .

Meanwhile, SARS-CoV-1's closest relatives were found to have originated up to a decade before that virus caused an outbreak in Guangdong, southern China, in 2002.

In each instance, these ancestral viruses were found between 600 to 1,200 miles distant from the locations of the human outbreaks—Wuhan in 2019 for COVID-19 and Guangdong with SARS.

Since horseshoe bats possess limited home ranges — usually only a few square miles — the scientists argue that it's It is improbable that the animals themselves transported the viruses. .

Rather, they contend, the virus probably traveled through an intermediary host — like raccoon dogs or civets — which were caught and moved by wildlife traders to city markets.

This conclusion echoes what scientists already know about the original SARS outbreak in 2002, when palm civets sold in Chinese wet markets were identified as key intermediaries between bats and humans.

The researchers argue that in both SARS outbreaks, the bat virus reservoir was far from the outbreak city — so the same kind of long-distance movement occurred previously and wasn't unique to Covid.

Dr Joel Wertheim, a top infectious disease expert and senior co-author of the study, said: 'At the start of the Covid pandemic, people worried the distance between Wuhan and the bat virus reservoir was too vast for a natural origin.

This document demonstrates that such occurrences are not rare.

The UC San Diego team notes that four live animal markets in Wuhan were selling species known to be susceptible to bat viruses in late 2019 — the clearest evidence yet that one of them may have been the 'epicenter' of the initial human outbreak.

However, as scholars advocate for a naturally occurring source of Covid-19, the document acknowledges that a possible laboratory accident cannot be entirely dismissed.

Many experts, including U.S. intelligence agencies like the FBI and CIA, believe SARS-CoV-2 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), where coronaviruses were being studied at the time.

Dr Simon Clarke, an infectious diseases expert in the UK who was not involved in the study and was only able to examine a press release, told : 'The most that can be said is that this paper lends weight to the argument that Covid-19 emerged from the wild animal trade, but I can't see how it proves that.

'After all, we know that the lab in Wuhan was collecting viruses from the wild.'

Asked about the methods used in the paper, he said: 'This is a top journal and I'd expect the paper to have been rigorously picked to pieces before publication.'

The UC researchers created a technique that steers clear of sections of the viral genome prone to frequent shuffling between viruses—a natural process known as recombination—which typically obscures efforts to track a virus’s ancestry.

By eliminating these 'recombinant' areas, they managed to construct an even more accurate genetic chronology than had been possible previously.

This follows China shockingly blaming the United States for the coronavirus outbreak.

Last Wednesday, a white paper issued by China's State Council Information Office proposed that the virus responsible for over 1.2 million deaths in the U.S. and at least 7 million fatalities globally might have originated from the United States.

This document seems to directly counter the fresh assaults from the Trump campaign, which continues to assert that COVID-19 originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), where coronavirus research was being conducted. The campaign presents this as the sole credible theory behind the outbreak.

The white paper released by China's State Council Information Office was meant to rebut the Trump Administration which has claimed the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) which was doing coronavirus experiments at the time.

In the report, Chinese officials wrote: 'The US government, instead of facing squarely its failure in response to Covid-19 and reflecting on its shortcomings, has tried to shift the blame and divert people's attention by shamelessly politicizing SARS-CoV-2 origins tracing.

'A thorough and in-depth investigation into the origins of the virus should be conducted in the United States. The United States should respond to the reasonable concern of the international community, and give a responsible answer to the world.'

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