MOSCOW - Multiple Chinese scientists have come to the conclusion that the novel coronavirus has natural origins and could not have been artificially created, a new report published by the Science China Life Sciences academic journal says.
"In the comparison with SARS-CoVof 2003, SARS-CoV-2 is extremely well adapted to the human populations and its adaptive shift from the animal host to humans must have been even more extensive.
By the blind watchmaker argument, such an adaptive shift can only happen prior to the onset of the current pandemic and with the aid of step-by-step selection. In this view, SARS-CoV-2 could not have possibly evolved in an animal market in a big city and even less likely in a laboratory," the scientists concluded.
The researchers specified that unless strains that carry "definitive signature of human design" are identified in the novel coronavirus, the claim of non-natural origin of SARS-CoV-2 is moot.
Head of the Novosibirsk State University's Laboratory and corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) Sergey Netesov told Sputnik earlier this month that it could take up to two years to find out the exact origins of the novel coronavirus.
In January, international experts travelled to Wuhan where they examined a laboratory, hospitals and markets for clues on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.
The expert mission of the World Health Organization (WHO) then compiled a report, saying that a leak of the new coronavirus from a laboratory in Wuhan, the first hotbed of Covid-19, was very unlikely.
The report, released in March, said that the new virus was most likely transmitted to humans from bats through an intermediary host.
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