WHO looking into all possible hypotheses for coronavirus origin

dpa Geneva The World Health Organization (WHO) is not ruling out any hypotheses regarding the origin of the coronavirus, after the release of a new report...

dpa GenevaThe World Health Organization (WHO) is not ruling out any hypotheses regarding the origin of the coronavirus, after the release of a new report by scientists on Tuesday.“As far as WHO is concerned, all hypotheses remain on the table,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “We have not yet found the source of the virus, and we must continue to follow the science and leave no stone unturned as we do,” Tedros said.Tedros said the one research trip was not enough to find all the answers as research takes time.“We owe it to the world to find the source so we can collectively take steps to reduce the risk of this happening again,” he said.In the WHO report, the scientists recommended including pangolins, in addition to bats, in the search for the origin of the coronavirus that then made the leap to humans.Minks and cats could also be hosts of the virus, the scientists who searched for the source of the virus in China on behalf of the WHO wrote in their final report.The experts also did not rule out the possibility that the virus was already circulating in other countries before it was discovered in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December.However, the quality of previous studies on the subject left much to be desired, they said, and further research was needed.The report was presented to representatives of the 194 WHO member countries in Geneva on Tuesday and then published online. It was made available to dpa in advance.The investigation took place in a politically heated climate. China wanted to avoid being pilloried as the cause of the pandemic. Critics argue that China did not grant the 17 international experts all the access they wanted and exerted pressure in the preparation of the report. Participants, however, have denied this.“Of course there was political pressure, also from outside China,” said Peter Embarek, head of the research team.“We were never pressured to remove critical elements in our report, all scientist can stand behind it,” Embarek added.The thesis that the virus accidentally escaped from a laboratory and spread is considered an “extremely unlikely pathway,” according to the experts.Whether the Huanan market in Wuhan, which was at the centre of last year’s outbreak, was actually the source of the pandemic is not clear, the researchers reported.There are also known cases that had nothing to do with the market.The findings “could suggest that the market was not the original source of the outbreak,” the report said.Viruses most similar to SARS-CoV-2 - the scientific name for the one responsible for causing the potentially fatal respiratory disease Covid-19 at the heart if the current pandemic - have been found in bats and pangolins, they added.“However, neither of the viruses identified so far from these mammalian species is sufficiently similar to SARS-CoV-2 to serve as its direct progenitor,” the scientists wrote in their report.“In addition to these findings, the high susceptibility of mink and cats to SARS-CoV-2 suggests that additional species of animals may act as a potential reservoir.” The scientists assume that there is an intermediate host from which the virus was transmitted to humans. However, it has not been identified so far.