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According to experts, the hypothesis of the intermediate host is “probable or very probable” and the theory that the virus was released from the laboratory is considered “extremely unlikely,” he said in the final version of the long-awaited report, whose copy AFP received on Monday prior to the publication of the official document.
Researchers are now reportedly investigating which animals may have transmitted COVID-19 to humans.
Snakes were mentioned first, then endangered conifers, and finally ferret badgers were found at the defendants’ site.
However, researchers still wonder if, and how, the pandemic coronavirus was transmitted to humans. Experts believe that it is very likely that the COVID-19 coronavirus infection was first transmitted to bats through some intermediate animal.
Several studies have identified an increasingly different animal as the prime suspect, speculating on dogs, cats, badgers, lions and tigers, not to mention the tissues that have destroyed millions.
Experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) who participated in an international mission in Wuhan, China, found that the intermediate host hypothesis was “probable or highly probable” and classified the theory that the virus was released from the laboratory as “extremely unlikely”. “
The following is a brief description of the possible intermediate animals.
Snakes
Shortly after the appearance of the new disease in Wuhan in late 2019, scientists began to believe that it was caused by the bat virus.
Findings from a study sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, published in January 2020, suggest that the virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, is very close to a single bat coronavirus.
Bats are hosts to many coronaviruses.
However, the researchers say that SARS-CoV-2 reached humans through some other yet unidentified intermediate host.
A second study shortly after the first, whose findings were published in the Journal of Medical Virology, showed that snakes may be the culprits.
However, other experts immediately rejected the report, arguing that the intermediate host was likely a mammal, as in the case of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS / SARS). The SARS virus has been transmitted to humans by small mammal civets, valued in China for their meat.
SARS emerged in southern China in November 2002 and developed into a health crisis in mid-2003, particularly affecting Asia. The virus has killed 774 people, four-fifths of them in China and Hong Kong.
Conjunctions?
Researchers from the South China Agricultural University announced in February 2020 that the “missing link” between bats and humans could be the endangered mammal, whose scales are used in Chinese folk medicine.
Thistles were among the wild animals sold at the Huanan Market in Wuhan in central China, linked to most of the first known cases of COVID-19.
However, it is not clear at this time if bruising is actually to blame.
Cats and dogs are sick
Later that month, a sick human dog was quarantined in Hong Kong and tested “weakly positive” for COVID-19.
Cases of SARS-CoV-2 have also been reported in captive cats, ferrets, hamsters, lions, and tigers.
The researchers emphasize that pets can become infected with a pandemic coronavirus, but they cannot infect humans.
Millions of tissue destroyed
Suspicion also fell on tissues bred for valuable hides.
In June, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that workers likely to be infected with the tissue coronavirus in the Netherlands could be the first known people to be infected with animals.
Subsequently, COVID-19 cases were detected in tissue farms and in several other European Union countries, including Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Spain and Sweden. The same thing happened in the United States.
Tens of thousands of tissues were destroyed in the Netherlands in July, and 100,000 a month later, when the government advanced a ban on tissue culture.
In Denmark, where the number of tissues grown was three times the population, in November all tissues in the country were ordered destroyed: between 15 and 17 million. livestock.
Copenhagen warned that a mutation in the coronavirus, known as group 5, in a tissue population could jeopardize the effectiveness of future COVID-19 vaccines.
Link lost
The WHO expert mission that visited Wuhan was not without suspects, from rabbits to ferret badgers, raccoons and civet.
The final version of the long-awaited mission report, the copy of which was received by AFP on Monday before the official release of the document, says that it is highly likely that the COVID-19 coronavirus infection was first transmitted to bats through an animal. intermediate. , and the theory that the infection may have spread after the incident in the laboratory is almost completely rejected.
Overall, the findings are as expected and many questions, including about the intermediate host, remain unanswered, but the report details the reasons for the expert group’s findings. The researchers suggested further investigation in all areas except the laboratory spread hypothesis.
However, the mission stated that direct transmission of the coronavirus to bats was also “possible or probable.”
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