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The researchers are in the process of investigating the origin of the coronavirus in more detail. (Icon Image) Image: www.imago-images.de / bleungchopan
Researchers find 3 mutations of coronavirus: Wuhan theory crumbles
The coronavirus may have begun to spread in mid-September. and Wuhan may not have been the starting point of the pandemic. This is what British scientists believe, according to a “Newsweek” report.
Therefore, geneticist Peter Forster and his team at Cambridge University are trying to trace the source of the virus. You want to identify the first person infected with the coronavirus. Until now, this has not been possible.
Three mutations discovered so far
According to his data, the outbreak of the virus must have started between September 13 and December 7. According to the Newsweek report, researchers were able to trace the spread of the virus, including its genetic mutations, from China through Australia to Europe and the rest of the world. They found three different but closely related mutations in the virus: types A, B, and C.
Type A is the variant that was first transferred to humans. It is closer to the variant discovered in bats and is said to have been passed from these to pangolins to humans. It was found in Chinese and American patients.
Wuhan’s theory crumbles: wasn’t the city the starting point?
Type A is present in China, but it is not the most common. This also applies to Wuhan, where the virus is believed to have first broken out. Type B is the most common there: that questions the Wuhan thesis as the starting point of the pandemic.
By January 17, according to Forster, almost all of the coronavirus variants found in Wuhan were type B. The researchers also found that in Guangdong, a province about 500 kilometers from Wuhan, seven of the eleven infections found in patients were from type A. So the variant that was presumably first transferred to humans. Type B, however, is the predominant type in Europe.
Type C, in turn, was a branch of Type B that spread to Europe and Australia through Singapore. Type A is the most common in Australia, but Type C has also been found there.
So what do the results of the Corona study mean?
Based on this study, we can assume that the coronavirus does not originate in Wuhan, as previously assumed, but in Guangdong.. The main coronavirus found in Wuhan is already a branch of the original type A virus.
It can be assumed that the coronavirus spread in Guangdong before the first cases were known, and from there it reached the world. Although this has not yet been tested, the analysis could provide valuable information on the origin and spread of the virus.
The team investigated more than 1,000 Covid 19 cases in late March. The first known case of coronavirus was reported on November 17 when a 55-year-old man from Hubei province, near Wuhan, was diagnosed with Covid-19. However, experts are still unsure where and how the virus made the leap from animals to humans.
(om)
