WHO Scientist Says Virus Origin Still Unclear

The origin of the SARS‑CoV‑2 virus is still not fully known, although several theories exist. One possibility is that the virus jumped from a secondary animal host, said Soumya Swaminathan, former chief scientist of the World Health Organization (WHO), on Wednesday.

Speaking at a lecture on “Climate Change and Global Health” organized by the Telangana Akademi of Sciences at CSIR-CCMB, Swaminathan said, “We did not receive the data from the Wuhan lab needed to make a clear conclusion about the virus’s origin.”

She added that the idea that the virus was deliberately created and released to infect people worldwide has very little scientific evidence to support it.

Swaminathan’s comments underline that while research is ongoing, scientists still do not have enough information to confirm exactly how the virus first emerged.