Bat virus? Bioweapon? What the science says about Covid-19 origins
- Speculation about the emergence of the new coronavirus is spreading almost as quickly as the pandemic
- Scientists believe some pathways are more probable than others
Some possibilities are scientific hypotheses based on genetic data while others borrow from dark conspiracy theories with little or no basis in fact.
Laboratory researchers have established solid genetic links between the new coronavirus, known as Sars-CoV-2, and one found in a horseshoe bat in southeastern China.
Further genetic detective work – and what is known about the evolution of past coronaviruses that have infected people – indicates the pathogen may have passed through another animal species first. There, scientists believe, it mutated or combined with another virus before finding its way into a human body, latching onto cells and spreading.
But science has not stopped other theories from percolating. One theory – debunked last month by a genetic analysis by a group of the world’s top epidemiologists – is that the virus was bioengineered in a laboratory in Wuhan, the pandemic’s first epicentre.