New study claims that Covid-19 originated in Indian subcontinent

A new study titled the Early Cryptic Transmission and Evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in Human Hosts claims that the coronavirus was circulating in the Indian subcontinent months before the Wuhan outbreak.

The study was conducted by researchers at the Institute of Neuroscience under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the Shanghai-based Fudan University and the University of Texas at Houston.

According to a Chinese virologist cited in the Global Times report, countries should put in efforts to determine the origin of the virus as there are multiple theories that the coronavirus outbreak happened months before it was officially reported.

"Wuhan is the place where the first infection cases were formally recorded, but it does not prove that the coronavirus originated from Wuhan," Zeng Guang, chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Global Times.

Commenting on the latest study carried out by a research group from CAS, Zeng noted that it provides the public with another perspective regarding the virus's origin. However, it is too early to draw a conclusion.

Another investigative study on coronavirus revealed that Covid-19 was circulating in Italy by September 2019, months before the first documented case was reported in China’s Wuhan. The study was carried by the scientists at Milan’s National Cancer Institute (INT), as per the previous report.

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