Where did the Chinese coronavirus, who created it?

Since the emergence of the new coronavirus pneumonia the origin, distribution and development of the new virus has received considerable attention. Many experts say that based on available data, it is still impossible to answer where there is a new type of virus.

Began transmission of the new virus from animals to humans?

Of the original cases was believed that the source of the outbreak was the South China seafood market in Wuhan.

However, in January, Juan Chaolin, Deputy Director of a hospital in Wuhan and other experts, analyzed the first 41 cases diagnosed coronavirus pneumonia found that only 27 of the cases had visited the South China seafood market. The results of the study showed that the first confirmed case of the disease occurred on 1 December 2019, when the victim had no contact with the seafood market in South China and are not detected by an epidemiological link with subsequent confirmed cases, and his family had not experienced fever and respiratory symptoms.

In a related report on the website of the American magazine “Science,” Christian Anderson, a biologist is from the SCRIPPS Research Institute in USA, has suggested that it may be three scenarios for the emergence of a new coronavirus in the South China seafood market: it may be an infected person, animal, or group of people.

A number of experts and studies support this view. Wilt Ian Lipkin, Professor, School of public health. Melman at Columbia University, known as “a virus hunter,” said that the relationship between the novel coronavirus and the South China seafood market may be less direct, and perhaps what happened in the market, was a “secondary transmission” as the virus began to mutate and spread before.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, recently issued a document, stating that they analyzed the genomic data of 93 samples of the new coronavirus from 12 countries on four continents and found that they contained 58 haplotypes that are associated with the seafood market in South China. Haplotypes associated patient samples were H1 or its derivative, while more “old” haplotypes, such as H3, and H13 H38, entered from outside the South China seafood market, it confirms that the new coronavirus to the South China seafood market got there from another place.

To restore the chain of transmission of the novel coronavirus, scientists still lacks some of the components, the most critical of which is the first infected person, who is also called “patient zero”. “Patient zero” is the answer to many questions, which are crucial to search for intermediate hosts and answer questions about how the virus is transmitted from animals to humans.

A famous example is the “Spanish flu”, which is estimated to have killed tens of millions of people around the world a century ago. Although the epidemic was named after the first case in Spain, some retrospective studies later found that the first infected person may occur from the United States.

Daniel Lucy, an infectious disease expert at Georgetown University in the United States, said that taking into account such factors as the incubation period of the virus, the first case could occur in November 2019 or earlier.

Judging by the global spread of the novel coronavirus, although most cases can be traced back to the source of infection, countries such as the United States, report about the unstudied cases. In Italy, where the epidemic is worsening, “patient zero” is also not installed.

Tracking the spread of the virus is not completed

Established that the new coronavirus comes from animals. But as it evolved in nature before getting into the human body? Researchers from institutions such as Wuhan Institute of Virology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, published an article in which they say that they found that the sequence of the new coronavirus and coronavirus (TG13) at bats identical at 96%. TG13 today is the most similar strain with the genome of the new coronavirus, it is assumed that the bat is a natural host to a new kind of coronavirus.

Other studies also revealed that the new coronavirus has a similarity with the genome sequence of the coronavirus, which is a pangolin, especially in the area linking the receptors that allow the virus to enter the cell. This indicates that during the evolution of the novel coronavirus TG13 could recombine with a coronavirus carried by the pangolin.

Despite the existing research results, many experts claim that the origin of the novel coronavirus and its intermediate hosts is still difficult to determine, and full traceability of the virus may take a long time.

Stanley Perlman, Professor of Microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa in the United States, believes that animals that are intermediate hosts of the new virus can occur from outside of China, and imported was smuggled.

In the report of the who novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19), released in late February, States that “there are limitations in the available data, including; a source of animal origin and natural host of the virus, the transmission of the virus to man”, and so on. The epidemic is spreading, gaining global scale, and scientists still do not have answers to many questions