By Dominic Taylor-
New evidence suggests coronavirus jumped from animals to humans multiple times, according some researchers. The theory that a spillover occurred in the “wet markets” of Wuhan, where many species of wildlife from across China are held in crowded conditions has gained ground among many researchers, but is still b eing hotly contested.
Despite the lack of evidence that the species of bats in which the closest relatives of SARS-CoV-2 are found were sold through the Wuhan wet markets at any time in the two years before the pandemic, researchers believe the multiple transfer of the coronavirus is the most plausible explanation of how Covid-19 virus spread.
The source and cause of the pandemic has been of great interest to scientists and the media, with differing views of why and how it started being shared both online and behind closed doors.
The view that it was man made is popular in many circles, but researchers closely examing the series of events that preceded the widely international spread of the virus, are making deep extrapolations from available knowledge to them, and are putting their mental and intelelctual resources together in an attemot to definitively nail the factual cause of the global spread of the coronavirus.
A new pre-print study is believed to provide strong evidence to support the “natural spillover” hypothesis, with results that are hard to reconcile with the “lab leak” hypothesis.
It is premised on a detailed examination of the genetic sequences of two early lineages obtained from people infected in late 2019 and early 2020.
Researchers from across a pool of academia downloaded all complete genetic sequences for SARS-CoV-2 that had been lodged in a widely used genomic database. Of these sequences, 369 were lineage A, 1,297 were lineage B and just 38 were intermediates.
One researcher who didn’t want to be named told The Eye Of Media: ” the idea that the coronavirus jumped multiple times from animals to humans seems to be the most plausbile theory judging from an assessment of the the genetic sequences, and what the levels of infection and how quickly they spread. The assesment is still one in development and to be reviewd, but it is a strong theory at the moment. Many eminent researchers are gravitating towards that conclusion from the available evidence”.
Genetic evidence is believed to provide strong indication that there have been at least two separate spillover events into human populations, one being from lineage A and another being from lineage B. Researchers are united in the conclusion that the pandemic started after humans interacted with an infected species, and researchers believe this occured repeatedly before it was detected.