Scientists have cast doubt on everything we thought we knew about the origins of the coronavirus. A new report from the University of Cambridge claims to shed new light on the initial outbreak in China.-
It has so far been widely accepted that the Covid-19 infection originated in a wet market in the Wuhan province late last year. But the new research suggests it may have started farther south and was spreading among humans as early as September.
The findings have been published by the research team in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - although have not been peer-reviewed. They cite a "network" of infections that has thrown existing knowledge into doubt.
"The virus may have mutated into its final 'human-efficient' form months ago, but stayed inside a bat or other animal or even human for several months without infecting other individuals," University of Cambridge geneticist Peter Forster said on Thursday[.]
"Then, it started infecting and spreading among humans between September 13 and December 7, generating the network we present in [the journal] Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [PNAS]."
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By counting the various mutations of the virus, they were able to get closer to figuring out when the first human was infected by a strain closest to a virus spread among bats.
They found hundreds of mutations, indicating that the virus may have been spreading quietly in host animals for years before finally infecting humans.
A coronavirus typically acquires one mutation a month.
There have been unverified reports that the virus originated in a Wuhan lab where researchers were doing work into diseases in bats, but the new study doesn't support that.
"If I am pressed for an answer, I would say the original spread started more likely in southern China than in Wuhan," Mr Forster said.
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