All available evidence to date suggests that the novel Coronavirus has a natural animal origin and was not a manipulated or constructed virus, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.
“Many researchers have been able to look at the genomic features of SARS-CoV-2 and have found that evidence does not support that SARS-CoV-2 is a laboratory construct,” said the global health watchdog, stressing that if it were a constructed virus, its genomic sequence would show a mix of known elements, but “this is not the case”.
The WHO noted that the novel Coronavirus was identified in early January and its genetic sequence shared publicly on January 11-12.
According to the WHO, the full genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus from the early human cases and the sequences of many other viruses isolated from human cases from China and all over the world showed that the novel Coronavirus has an ecological origin in bat populations.
Although the intermediate animal host has not been identified, the WHO said, all available evidence indicated the novel coronavirus has a zoonotic source.
To better understand the source of the outbreak in China, a number of investigations are currently underway or planned.
The WHO’s clarification comes at a time when China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology is at the centre of a controversy with US President Donald Trump saying his government is trying to determine whether the virus emanated from a lab in Wuhan.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has told China to come out clean on what they know about COVID-19.
At a White House news conference Trump was asked about the reports of the virus escaping from the Wuhan lab, and he said he was aware of them. “We are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation that happened,” he said.
A senior Trump administration official earlier this month said lives could be saved globally if China allowed the United States to work directly with laboratories in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the outbreak began.
However, the Wuhan virology lab chief Yuan Zhiming, in a media interview, has rejected the rumours that his institute is the original source of COVID-19. He added that the virus “cannot be man-made.”
Meanwhile, US President Trump has termed the Coronavirus outbreak as an “attack” and has been constantly blaming China and the World Health Organisation for being responsible for the pandemic.
Trump warned on Saturday that China could face consequences if it was “knowingly responsible” for the Coronavirus pandemic. “It could have been stopped in China before it started and it wasn’t and now the whole world is suffering because of it, ” he said.
“Was it a mistake that got out of control or was it done deliberately?” he further asked.
Trump, last week, also announced cutting off funding up to $500 million annually to WHO, accusing the UN body of “severely mismanaging and covering up” the spread of the deadly Coronavirus when it first emerged in China.