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Theory Covid-19 came from laboratory 'extremely unlikely', says investigator
The virus which causes Covid-19 is ‘extremely unlikely’ to have come from a laboratory-related incident, experts concluded after a visit to Wuhan.
Dr Peter Ben Embarek, leader of the WHO team investigating the origins of the virus in Wuhan, said: “The findings suggest lab incident hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain the introduction of the virus into the human population.”
Sars-CoV-2 “may have originated from zoonotic transmission”, a team of experts from China and the World Health Organisation (WHO) concluded.
But the “reservoir hosts” remain to be identified, they told a press conference.
The team have made a series of recommendations for future studies to examine the origins of the virus – including a direct spillover from animals to humans or the virus coming to humans through an “intermediary host”.
They have also called for more research into frozen foods.
