The UK government believes that the coronavirus outbreak may have started due to an accident in a Chinese laboratory.
Many experts believe the outbreak began when animals (especially bats)passed the virus to humans in china, specifically in or near the seafood market in the city of Wuhan where live animals are sold. The so-called wet market in Wuhan, where wild animals are kept in cages and sold as pets or food. It is believed that a bat infected animal- perhaps a pangolin--infected the first human.
UK parliamentary committee last week accused the Chinese government of spreading disinformation about the origins of the virus. The UK government believes that the novel coronavirus may have accidentally leaked from a laboratory of the Chinese city of Wuhan where scientists were researching viruses. While officials in prime Borris johnson's government believe this is still the most likely explanation, it is "no longer being discounted" that a leak from a nearby laboratory caused the outbreak.
"There is an alternative view too[ the zoonotic theory] based on the nature of the virus," a member of the UK government's emergency committee of senior officials, told, "perhaps it is no coincidence that there is that laboratory in Wuhan. It is not discounted."
There are two scientific labs close to Wuhan where scientists are believed to have been carrying out tests on viruses: the institute of virology and Wuhan center for disease control. Both are within 10 miles of the animal market, where the outbreak is widely believed to have started last year.
The first case of coronavirus in China was established at the beginning of December last year. Still, it was also the case that some of the reporting from china was knot clear about scale, nature, the contagiousness of the virus. A report by the UK parliament's foreign affairs committee accused the Chinese government of spreading disinformation about the virus. "disinformation about the NOVEL COVID-19 has already cost lives," as said by the committee.
Reporters after speaking with more than half a dozen virus experts about the origin of the outbreak and all of them say anyone who claims to know the source of COVID-19 is guessing. The scientists say there is zero evidence that the Chinese or American government purposefully introduced the new coronavirus --SARS-CoV-2-- to the public.
Another potentially explosive theory --first posed by two Chinese researchers in early February and amplified by FOX News host Tucker Carlson on march 31st --holds that the origin traces back to an accident in one of the two labs near Wuhan market that work with bats. However, most of the experts interviewed for this story discounted the theory --saying, "it was not supported by evidence. The method has also been strenuously denied by the Chinese government and one of the labs.
But one expert, a chemical biology professor, and bioweapons expert at Rutgers University has suggested to several media outlets that the lab-accident theory has credence. The possibility that the virus entered humans through a laboratory accident cannot and should not be dismissed.
Researchers agree that the coronavirus jumped from an animal to a human, a phenomenon known as "zoonotic spillover."In early February, Chinese researchers published an article in a top science journal --that concluded the "2019-CCTV is 96% identical at the whole genome level to a bat coronavirus. One of those scientists Is Peter Daszak, a virus hunter who has been working in China for ten years, said: " We are very confident that the origin of COVID-19 is in bats. However, we just don't know where exactly it originated --which bat species exactly, and we don't know how many others there are out there that could emerge in the future."
Very informative..well done
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