The origin of nCoV seems to have been identified in international media: In late 2019, someone at the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan was infected with the virus from wild animals.
The rest is a terrible story that is being written as Covid-19 continues to spread globally, to date infecting nearly 2.2 million people and killing more than 145,000.
Pangolins, the animal species believed to be the intermediary that transmitted nCoV from bats to humans.
Images of pangolins locked in cages were widely posted on the news, because this animal is believed to be the source of the virus before infecting humans.
However, there are still many unclear aspects about the origin of Covid-19 that scientists are trying to clarify, including the question of which animal transmitted the virus to humans.
Professor Stephen Turner, head of the microbiology department at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, believes that the virus most likely originated in bats.
According to him, viruses like nCoV have existed in the animal world for a long time.
Scientists say it is highly likely that the virus originated in bats but was transmitted through an intermediary animal first, similar to how the coronavirus strain that caused the SARS pandemic in 2002 was transmitted from horseshoe bats to civet cats.
Many people speculate that pangolins are the intermediate hosts between bats and humans.
Nature magazine reported that pangolins are not on the list of fresh products sold at Wuhan’s Hoa Nam market, but store owners can sell them illegally, because trading pangolins is illegal.
`It is not yet possible to say for sure that pangolins are the vectors of the virus,` Turner said.
Professor Edward Holmes from the University of Sydney co-authored a study published in the journal Nature to understand the origin of nCoV by looking at its genome.
A statistical study shows that a property of the virus has evolved that allows it to attach to human cells.
Another study ruled out pangolins as an intermediate host because similar virus samples taken from pangolins lacked an amino acid sequence found in viruses transmitted in humans.
According to Holmes’ research, the scenario of people in Wuhan’s Huanan seafood market being infected after coming into contact with infected animals is just one possibility for the origin of Covid-19.
Analysis published in the medical journal Lancet of the first 41 patients infected with nCoV showed that 27 of them had direct contact at the Wuhan Huanan seafood market, but the first case did not go to the market.
Professor Stanley Perlman, a leading immunologist at the University of Iowa, said the idea that the virus originated in the Wuhan market `cannot be ruled out` but that the possibility `seems less likely` based on the material.
Police officers stand guard in front of the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, January 10.
Perlman believes there was an intermediary animal that transmitted the virus to humans.
`I suspect that the virus most likely evolved on an intermediary animal. The virus has not changed significantly during the three months of the pandemic, showing that it has adapted well to the human body before,` Perlman
According to Professor Michelle Baker, an immunologist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), it is `most likely` that the virus originated in bats.
`Wet markets have been identified as a problem because you can come into contact with many different animals there,` Baker commented.
`We have found the ancestor of the virus, but having a broader knowledge of nCoV in other species can give us clues about how it evolved and infected humans,` Professor Turner emphasized.