WHO Draft Report Says Its 'Extremely Unlikely' COVID-19 Emerged From A Lab

A draft report from the team of researchers with the World Health Organization says that it is "extremely unlikely" that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory. The team, made up of 17 scientists picked by the WHO and 17 Chinese scientists, spent 27 days trying to determine the origin of the virus responsible for the global pandemic that has killed nearly 2.8 million people around the world.

The report, which was leaked to the media ahead of its release, said there was no evidence that any labs had viral samples that could have caused the coronavirus pandemic.

"There is no record of viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 in any laboratory before December 2019, or genomes that in combination could provide a SARS-CoV-2 genome," the report reads, according to CNN. "In view of the above, a laboratory origin of the pandemic was considered to be extremely unlikely."

Instead, the researchers believe the virus likely emerged in a bat and spread to another animal before infecting humans. They were unable to definitively determine where the virus originated. While there is speculation the virus was first transferred from animals to humans at a live-animal market in Wuhan, the researchers said there is evidence the virus was spreading before it was linked to the wet market.

"Many of the early cases were associated with the Huanan market, but a similar number of cases were associated with other markets, and some were not associated with any markets. Transmission within the wider community in December could account for cases not associated with the Huanan market, which, together with the presence of early cases not associated with that market, could suggest that the Huanan market was not the original source of the outbreak," the report added.

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