While there remain many questions about the trajectory of the COVID-19 disease outbreak, one thing is broadly accepted in the scientific community: The virus was not created in a lab but naturally evolved in an animal host.
SARS-CoV-2’s genomic molecular structure – think the backbone of the virus – is closest to a coronavirus found in bats. Parts of its structure also resemble a virus found in scaly anteaters, according to a paper published earlier this month in the journal Nature Medicine.
Someone manufacturing a virus targeting people would have started with one that attacked humans, wrote National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins in an editorial that accompanied the paper.
Andersen was lead author on the paper. He said it could have been a one-time occurrence.
“It’s possible it was a single event, from a single animal to a single human,” and spread from there.