Another step in discovering the origins of Covid-19?

Pasteur Institute researchers claim to have found coronaviruses close to Covid-19 in bats that live in Laos.

Two years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the origin of the virus remains unclear. Pasteur Institute study published in the scientific journal nature It revives the path of transmission from animal to human. French researchers have discovered viruses very similar to Covid-19 in bats in Laos.

More specifically, the study authors identified “three viruses that have genomic similarities to SARS-CoV-2”. In particular, they demonstrated the ability of these three coronaviruses to invade human cells, via the linkage between the spike protein and the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 receptor, and multiply there.

Pending questions

However, scientists noticed one significant difference: the lack of furin fission, which allows Covid-19 to enter human respiratory cells, making the virus highly contagious. According to virologist Mark Elwett who led the study, other “close” viruses may also pose a “risk to human health.”

However, this thesis does not explain how Covid-19 could have emerged in Wuhan in China when the bats studied came from southern China, northern Laos and Vietnam. Mark Elliott notes in Columns that “this raises the question of how they are published.” definitely†

According to the hypotheses put forward, Covid-19 could have spread quietly between humans before mutating and gaining the ability to infect, otherwise it would be the first known coronavirus that acquired this characteristic. This would have enabled him to pass from animal to human more easily. More research is being done to determine the origin of Covid-19. If the institute has taken a big step, the debate over the origin of the epidemic is far from over.

Video – Covid-19: Biden accuses China of withholding information on the ‘origin of the epidemic’