So far, scientists are still debating the origin of the Corona virus. Most believe it came from bats, but some believe the theory that the Corona virus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan cannot be ruled out.
Dr. David Relman, a microbiologist and professor at Stanford University, says that both scenarios cannot be ignored. The hypothesis that the Corona virus originated in nature is quite convincing because such things are not a new occurrence.
"First, almost all previous outbreaks came from nature, so there is a history. Second, all the close relatives of this virus are bat coronaviruses, so we assume that at some point in the past, this virus had bats. It carried it," said Relman.
He also said that the trade in wild animals made it possible for the Corona virus to jump from bats to humans. Now turning to the second theory that states that the Corona virus originated in a Wuhan laboratory, Relman presented several supporting reasons.
"First, the place where all the closest known coronaviruses are in the environment is a thousand miles from where the first human case appeared, so there is a huge geographical gap," he said, or in other words, the location is too far for the virus to be spread naturally globally.
"Secondly, in the place where this disease started, there is the largest collection of bat samples and especially bats containing the Corona virus. They are in Wuhan, in the laboratory. That is the second fact," he added.
The third reason is that lab viruses have the potential to occur due to human error. "To claim that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has never had an accident, that there is no possibility of an accident, is contrary to everything we know about human activity, people and laboratories," he said.
There are several records of virus leaks from laboratories, for example the SARS outbreak in 2004 in China and anthrax in 2014 in the United States. Moving on to the last or fourth reason.
"They (laboratories) not only have a lot of samples of bat coronaviruses, they work with them in many ways that can create additional risks, change their genomes and create hybrid viruses," he said.
"The point is to create a form of artificial evolution. Do we know that the experiment raised the SARS-CoV-2 Corona virus? No. Is that theory possible? Yes," he continued as quoted by CNN.
But as already mentioned, so far there is absolutely no valid evidence about the leakage of the Corona virus from the Wuhan laboratory. The lab and the Chinese government have repeatedly denied this.
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