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Six months into coronavirus pandemic, scientists say exact source may never be identified
- WHO team is expected to meet Chinese health officials this weekend to set parameters for an international investigation
- But how, where and when the pathogen was first transmitted to a human could remain a mystery, according to experts
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As the World Health Organisation prepares to send a team into China to investigate the origin of the Covid-19 disease, scientists with experience tracking virus behaviour say the search could take years of work and may not reach a definitive conclusion.
An advance team of WHO experts is expected to meet Chinese health officials this weekend to set parameters for an international mission. But one obstacle is time itself in tracking the virus transmission route more than six months after the outbreak was identified in central China.
Exactly how, where and when the pathogen got into a human is the unsolved mystery.
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The consensus is that Sars-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, likely came from a bat. It may have found its way into another animal, shifting its genetic shape along the way, enabling it to latch onto human cells. Once in a human host it was carried on trains, buses and planes to infect the world as people breathed it in and coughed it out.
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‘We cannot beat this virus with ideologies’ - World Health Organisation
‘We cannot beat this virus with ideologies’ - World Health Organisation
While pinpointing the virus’ exact route into humans may not be possible, scientists can build stronger hypotheses, said David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
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