The coronavirus pandemic almost didn’t happen, a new study shows.
The Covid-19 wave made its way across the globe due to a “perfect storm of conditions.”
Scientists from the University of Arizona claim the potentially killer virus spread due to constricted conditions in China after it caught “a lucky break or two.”
Speaking to CNN, Michael Worobey, professor of evolutionary biology at the American University said:
“It was a perfect storm – we know now that it had to catch a lucky break or two to actually firmly become established.”
“If things had been just a tiny bit different, if that first person who brought that into the Huanan market had decided to not go that day, or even was too ill to go and just stayed at home, that or other early super – spreading events might not have occurred.”
“We may never have even known about it.”
Worobey believes that the market in Wuhan was the place where there virus began it’s transmission rather than it’s birthplace.
“What may have happened here was that the virus was sputtering along in a very low number of people in October, November, into December and then it got into this Huanan seafood market.”
The study was undertaken to find out how long the bug could have been circulating across China before it was discovered.
They found that the virus did not infect the first human until October 2019 and that only around a dozen people had been infected between October and December.
The original location of the outbreak has however, still not been verified.
The report states: “Even though all of the earliest documented cases of COVID-19 were found in Hubei province, we cannot discount the possibility that the index case initially acquired the virus elsewhere.”
“Nonetheless, our dating inference is insensitive to geography.”
“Further, our results suggest that if the virus first emerged in a rural community, it would have needed to migrate to an urban setting to avoid extinction.”
“The lack of reports of COVID-19 elsewhere in China in November and early-December suggest Hubei province, is the location where human-to-human transmission chains were first established.”
It has also been revealed that the World Health Organisation’s conclusions into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic was reportedly confirmed via a show of hands, among a panel of experts which included Chinese officials.
The claim comes after the international team was accused of a “whitewash” by stating that it was likely that Covid did NOT originate at the Wuhan wet market or was derived from a state-run virology lab in the city.
The coronavirus pandemic has killed over 2.7 million people so far and caused unprecedented economic and social upheaval.