China emerging as source of COVID-19, laboratory leak theory gaining traction

INTERNATIONAL DESK: More than three years after COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China appears to be emerging as the source of the virus. The laboratory lab leak theory initially considered as a conspiracy theory, is gaining more and more traction among the scientific community worldwide, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported.

In the latest development, some international researchers analyzed the early data of the Covid pandemic uploaded by Chinese scientists to foreign databases and have found traces of raccoon dogs during the spread of coronavirus to humans.

Animals may be intermediate hosts. According to researchers, Chinese scientists’ data unexpectedly provided some information about the virus’s origin.

The World Health Organization (WHO) noted the surprising revelation that the latest Chinese information provided some “clues” about the origin but not complete answers yet. The WHO urged China to release all information related to the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic after new findings were briefly shared on an international database used to track pathogens, according to RFA.

WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus while responding to a question about COVID-19, said the virus’s origin could not be determined without full access to the information China has. He called upon Beijing to share as much data as possible and added that until that happened, all hypotheses remained on the table.

“All hypotheses are on the table. That is where the WHO stands, and that is why we have been asking Beijing to cooperate on this,” Tedros said. “If they are willing to do that, then we will know what happened. “What or how it (the outbreak) started,” he said.

As per China’s notification to WHO, the COVID virus was first detected in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. WHO has been working with scientists to learn more about the earliest cases in 2019, such as the whereabouts of infected people. The WHO also asked the US to provide raw data, and a recent study funded by the US Department of Energy suggested that a leak from a Wuhan laboratory may have caused the COVID-19 pandemic, according to RFA.

A Chinese scientist recently claimed that the Covid virus may have originated from humans, CNN reported.

Tong Yigang of the Beijing University of Chemical Technology, said that the genetic sequences of viral samples taken from the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan thought to be the ground zero site of the pandemic, were “almost identical” to those of patients infected with the coronavirus, suggesting that COVID-19 may have originated from humans.

Tong was speaking at a press conference held by the Chinese State Council regarding research into the origin of the virus. (ANI)