Theories have circulated about the root of the COVID-19 pandemic since its early days of detection. One pervading rumor is that it spread to the public by initially escaping or was intentionally released from a lab in Wuhan examining bat coronaviruses. However, a Wuhan official has denied the idea that the novel coronavirus was developed in a laboratory. It was potentially of animal origin, according to experts.
The claim that the coronavirus was cooked up in a lab has no support from any evidence that can be accessed by the public. This implies that tight-lipped network members conspired to invent the coronavirus outbreak or to whitewash an accident that prompted it.
The head honcho of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China, a high-security bio lab, has affirmed that the virus has no association with their facility.
According to the vice director of WIV Zhiming Yuan, "There is no way this virus came from us. We have a strict regulatory regime and code of conduct of research, so we are confident."
Zhiming Yuan is also prominently known as "Batwoman" by the media and her colleagues due to her bat cave expeditions for 16 years.
On how or where the first patients contracted the coronavirus, Chinese epidemiologists have revealed little information.
One possibility was a wet market in Wuhan. Live wildlife was sold for food, and 66 percent of the first batch of 41 cases in December last year had exposure to the market. However, genomic evidence and reports indicate that the virus could have possibly spread earlier in November, meaning there are many other places it could have been transferred to humans from a bat or an intermediary species.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology's Communist Party chief Yuan Zhiming has responded to those suggesting theories that the virus had escaped from the facility and prompted the outbreak in the central Chinese city in an interview Saturday with the state-run China Global Television Network. "There is absolutely no way that the virus originated from our institute."
She dismissed the theories that "Patient Zero," which has been yet identified, had contact with the facility. He added that none of its employees, student researchers, or retirees were confirmed to be infected.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there is no indication that the coronavirus had any lab manipulation.
All accessible evidence alluded that the coronavirus was rooted in bats in China in late 2019 and it was not engineered in a laboratory, the organization added.
The claim that the virus was constructed in a laboratory has all the hallmarks of a conspiracy theory and has procured support from the US government's highest levels.
Strong and accessible evidence supports a remarkably different hypothesis regarding its origins: The virus transformed naturally.
It was still reportedly not an option to dismiss the idea that scientists were examining a naturally-occurring coronavirus before it escaped from their laboratory.
"Based on no data, but simply (a) likely scenario is that the virus went from bats to some mammalian species, currently unknown despite speculation, (and) spilled over to humans," according to Gerald Keusch, associate director of the Boston University National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories.
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