SARS-CoV-2, a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19, may have originated in bats, but how it gets transmitted to people has now been the subject of strong speculation and is currently being investigated by the World Health Organization (WHO).
DW Akademie reports that the WHO experts arrived in China today to perform a long-anticipated investigation into the origins of COVID-19.
A total of 10 researchers whose expertise is in public health, ecology, and virology are hoping to find an answer to key questions on how and when SARS-CoV-2 first infected humans.
Even though it has been more than one year since the first reported COVID-19 case in China in December 2019, it remains unknown to experts exactly when and where the virus originally occurred.
While the majority of the evidence so far refers to the horseshoe bats in China, research currently being conducted, including one that suggests COVID-19 was already circulating in Italy as early as November 2019, serves as a reminder that infectious disease outbreaks are frequently more complicated than they appear.
Starting Point
Experts say, to better understand how and when humans get infected in the first place for both present and future outbreaks, it is essential to "trace the virus back to its starting point."
During the onset of an outbreak, tracing back the infection back to its starting point help slow the spread of an illness before it springs out of control.
If each case can be determined, each contact traced, and each probable carrier quarantined, pathogens can be stopped.
However, according to virologist Naomi Forrester-Soto, who is studying vector-borne diseases at Keele University in the United Kingdom, even after that initial control period is lost, as in the case with COVID-19, discovering the "origin of the virus can give us useful insights."
The more they understand how infectious diseases emerge, the virologist added, the better they can have them predicted and controlled.
That does not necessarily mean, though, identifying COVID-19 "patient zero," which a lot of experts, including Forrester-Soto, think is no longer possible.
Instead, it is about determining in which species COVID-19 is most likely to have occurred and in what particular circumstance it "crossed over from animals to humans."
What's Missing?
Even though the first COVID-19 case was discovered in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, and much of the speculation about its starting point has centered around the probability it passed from bats to people through another species sold at a wet market there, it is possible it came from somewhere else.
Chinese officials have also said it is possible that the disease could have arisen entirely in another country. Although researchers have not provided this theory with much credibility, the WHO experts have repeatedly stated they are "keeping an open mind as all potential starting points."
According to Martin Beer, a virology professor at the Federal Research Institute for Animal Health in Germany, the origins of COVID-19 may be in China, as "that is where we saw the first cluster of infections."
However, he added, that does not necessarily mean the initial spillover emerged at the wet market, as mentioned earlier, or even in Wuhan.
Samples collected and stored after the SARS-CoV-1 outbreak in 2013 show that the RaTG13 bat virus spreading in horseshoe bats of Yunnan province of China is found to have 96-percent similarity to SARS-COV-2 that causes COVID-19.
Samples collected and stored after the 2013 SARS-CoV-1 outbreak show the RaTG13 bat virus circulating in horseshoe bats of China's Yunnan province has a 96% similarity to the new coronavirus that causes COVID.
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