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Bangalore: Members of the joint World Health Organization (WHO)-China team tasked with determining the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus urge world leaders and the scientific community to accelerate the follow-up research needed to understand doing where it is. The virus has come from
The team of scientists previously published a report in March, following his visit to Wuhan, and concluded that the origin of the coronavirus is most likely to be natural transmission from animals.
However, in a commentary piece in the magazine Nature On Wednesday, the team said their March report is “the first step in a process that has stalled”.
The authors put forward six priorities going forward to rapidly determine the origin of the virus, warning that understanding the origin is a global priority and that further delays would potentially make important biological studies impossible. This is because the antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 virus will be reduced in undetected infected animals and in the earliest known human cases.
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‘Time is Running Out’
In their commentary piece, the scientists noted that as antibodies have dwindled, collecting vital blood samples from animals and early human infection is imperative, and the window for this is rapidly closing.
To continue the second phase of the global study into the origins of the pandemic, the team recommends six priorities.
These include additional tracing studies looking for early COVID cases globally, antibody surveys to identify locations where cases were never caught between individuals, community surveys that access markets in Wuhan before human cases were identified. Will explore animal supply routes to reach, study and assess wild bats and other potential natural reservoirs or intermediate hosts of the virus in and around China, a detailed analysis of all previous cases and follow up on new clues.
The researchers also said that the original finding is at a “critical juncture” and that the biological feasibility of conducting traceback studies is declining with each passing day.
To avoid this, the scientists called on the scientific community and world leaders to come together and accelerate the next phase of research “while there is still time”.
Read also: COVID may enter endemic phase in India, says WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan
Original mission and international response
In their article, the scientists also outlined the basic plan of their 28-day mission to China in January 2021: a retrospective study of respiratory disease in the community in 2019, a review of patient files and death certificates, a reconstruction of the initial outbreak, Mapping and tracing the supply chain of products entering the Hunan Seafood Market, testing a range of animals including livestock, pets and wildlife, and analyzing and reviewing published and unpublished viral genomic data.
The team said there was general consensus that the virus was spreading in Wuhan in December 2019 and that there was a strong link between the market and the early part of the epidemic in China.
The authors acknowledged that some of the raw data needed from China has not been shared by the Chinese team, citing patient confidentiality in 174 cases, but the team concluded that they were not likely an earlier or early set of infections.
He further noted that while the laboratory-leak hypothesis was not part of his original mission, he felt it was too important to ignore.
While their investigation concluded a possible animal origin, the scientists also stated that there was no definitive evidence for or against the four proposed routes of transmission – natural zoonotic spillover from wild animals, zoonotic transmission from handling farmed animals, Zoonotic transmission and laboratory-leakage route by eating contaminated food.
The authors wrote extensively about the nature of their investigation, subsequent criticisms and media coverage of the report, and commentary about their work in China.
According to him, before the report was released in March, some governments had sent a formal statement to the WHO saying that China did not share enough data with the world, the lab-leak theory was not getting enough attention or China’s international politics played a role in the findings.
He defended his investigation, noting that “frank discussions” had been held with leading scientists in Wuhan, and examining all evidence, the team concluded that there was no clue to determine whether the virus originated from a laboratory. leaked or not.
The researchers cited several reports that followed their publication in March that contained new data that supported the lab-leak hypothesis.
He then provided an explanation as to why each of those cases lacked sufficient data to provide lead for the laboratory-leak hypothesis and also asked these study authors to submit any supporting data with the WHO.
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