More than a year after a "
mysterious pneumonia" sickened workers at a seafood market in
China, scientists are still gathering clues about where
SARS-CoV-2 -- the virus that causes COVID-19 -- emerged from.
"It's critical to understand where this virus came from, so that we can understand how to stop future outbreaks going forward," said Anne Rimoin, an infectious disease epidemiologist at UCLA.
The investigation into the virus' origins is crucial for public
health and science reasons, but it has also sparked tension among world powers, especially between the United States and China, whose leaders have accused one another of lack of transparency and xenophobia during the pandemic.
"It's not about finger-pointing -- it's just about understanding it, so we know how to do better in the future," Rimoin said.
[...]
Scientists have long said that SARS-CoV-2 has zoonotic origins, meaning that it likely jumped from animals to people when humans came in contact with an animal infected with the virus. That contact could include handling the infected animal, eating it or preparing the animal for market, according to Rimoin.
However, experts didn't know exactly how the virus had gotten into people and reaching a definitive conclusion about SARS-CoV-2's origins might take years. They also don't know where or when the virus first made its way into humans and several studies suggest that it may have been present elsewhere in the world -- perhaps circulating at low levels -- before the major outbreak in Wuhan, China.