As the world battles the ravaging Covid tsunami, at World Health Organization’s request samples suggesting the coronavirus was circulating outside China by October 2019 have been re-tested. As the novel coronavirus has rampaged, Wuhan Institute of Virology has been pulled over and held accountable for conducting risky gain of function research on coronaviruses. With increasing calls for a fresh probe into the origins of Covid-19, an explosive new study has found that Chinese scientists created the virus in a lab in Wuhan.
However with increasing international pressure to learn about the origins of the virus, President Joe Biden ordered his administrators to find out answers at the earliest. WHO reacted to Biden’s request and said his administration is probing rival theories clouted by political ambitions. Covid-19 was first identified in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, while Italy’s first patient was detected on February 21 last year in a small town near Milan.
One new study has suggested that origin of the virus might not be in China suggesting antibodies to either the virus or a variant were detected in Italy in 2019. The Italian researchers’ findings, published in scientific magazine ‘Tumori Journal’, showed neutralising antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in blood taken from healthy volunteers in Italy in October 2019 during a lung cancer screening trial. Most of the volunteers were from the northern region around Milan, which was the first and hardest hit by the virus in Italy.
This prompted Chinese State media to suggest the virus might not have originated in china, although the Italian researchers stressed the findings raised questions about when the virus first emerged rather than where.
Also Read: New UK study on Wuhan Lab exposes link behind Chinese scientists creating the virus
The Wuhan lab is also getting investigated for negligent safety standards as well as for being under the direct control of the Chinese military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had officially declared that the seafood market in Wuhan may have been a victim of the virus and a super spreader.
