A scientist from China has denied that the coronavirus or COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, claiming that it was the first place where it was found. The virus that has been linked to a 'wet market' at the central city of China after it spread all over the world earlier this year, has till now infected over 56 million people and killed more than 1.34 million people, as per reports.
But Zeng Guang, who is the former chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said that the deadly virus is not from China. He mentioned, "Wuhan was where the coronavirus was first detected but it was not where it originated."
COVID-19 and China
Guang also said that it was the previous experience of China with the SARS that has left a legacy of monitoring and detection that alerted them to coronavirus and also prompted their extreme measures for containing the disease. "China has built a world-leading monitoring system to report unknown pneumonia since the outbreak of SARS in 2003. We always stay on high alert. Thanks to this system, we are able to become the first in the world to identify Covid-19," he said.
His claims that were published by The South China Morning Post came after another top Chinese researcher argued that the was in fact imported to China through frozen meat, rather than the most popular theory that the virus jumped from animals to humans from the wet market of the city.
Researchers all over the world are presently trying to unravel the origins of the devastating disease. Many experts believe that the coronavirus did originate in Wuhan. The claims from China come after an Italian study suggested that the disease may have been there in Italy as early as September 2019. But the co-author of the research stated that it did not 'dispute' the origins of the virus.
New research has questioned when the disease first came into circulation, after the evidence of the virus antibodies were discovered in Italian lung cancer patients from September 2019, a whole three months ahead of the virus was noted in China. An effective vaccine for the deadly virus is expected by the first quarter of 2021.
