American researchers believe they’ve pinpointed when and where Covid first emerged — and it might not have been in China.
Researchers from the University of California, San Diego, say they’ve uncovered evidence that SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes Covid — likely started evolving in bats as early as 2012, in a region spanning western China and northern Laos.
They analyzed more than 100 coronaviruses found in horseshoe bats, comparing them with SARS-CoV-2 and its cousin SARS-CoV-1, the virus behind the 2002 outbreak.
This allowed them to build what they believe is the most comprehensive picture of the viruses’ evolutionary histories.
The findings suggest that the closest viral relatives to SARS-CoV-2 emerged between five and seven years before Covid exploded in 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 both cases, these ancestral viruses were traced 600 to 1,200 miles away from where the human outbreaks happened — Wuhan in 2019 for Covid and Guangdong with SARS.
Because horseshoe bats have small home ranges — typically just a few square miles — the researchers say it’s unlikely the animals themselves carried the viruses.
The above map highlights the area where the researchers say Covid may have emerged, and the distance between there and Wuhan, where the pandemic began
Instead, they argue, the virus most likely made the journey via an intermediate host — such as raccoon dogs or civets — which were captured and transported by wildlife traders to markets in major cities.
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 paper shows that it isn’t unusual.’
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.
But while the academics argue in favor of a natural origin for Covid, the paper cannot rule out a potential lab leak.
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 DailyMail.com: ‘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.
Previous research has identified horseshoe bats as a reservoir of coronaviruses and the likely original source of SARS-CoV-2 (stock)
‘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 developed a method that avoids parts of the viral genome that are frequently shuffled between viruses — a natural process called recombination — which often muddies attempts to trace a virus’s lineage.
By filtering out these ‘recombinant’ regions, they were able to build a more reliable genetic timeline than ever before.
It comes after China sensationally claimed that America was to blame for the Covid pandemic.
In a white paper released Wednesday last week, China’s State Council Information Office suggested the virus that killed 1.2 million Americans and at least 7 million people worldwide may have originated in the United States.
The document appears to be a direct rebuttal to renewed attacks from the Trump campaign, which has doubled down on claims that Covid leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) — a lab known to be conducting coronavirus experiments — calling it the only plausible explanation for the pandemic.
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.’
