WHO asserts coronavirus likely came from animals and not manufactured in lab, as per all available evidence: Report

Earlier, the WHO had said that the genetic makeup of the virus is closely related to coronaviruses identified in bats, suggesting the disease originated in that animal before making the leap into humans, as reported by the Daily Mail.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Tuesday asserted that coronavirus was not manufactured in a laboratory but it likely came from animals, as per all available evidence, according to a report. Earlier, the WHO had said that the genetic makeup of the virus is closely related to coronaviruses identified in bats, suggesting the disease originated in that animal before making the leap into humans, as reported by the Daily Mail.

According to the Daily Mail, WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific, Takeshi Kasai, said that the exact source has not been identified yet. Kasai spoke after US President Donald Trump said the US is looking into whether the virus leaked from a laboratory near China's Wuhan which was doing research on coronaviruses including the SARS virus, a close genetic relative of the current coronavirus, added the report. 

Meanwhile, Russia's former health minister, Veronika Skvortsova, denied ruling out the possibility that the virus came from a laboratory and asked to conduct a very thorough study,

It is surmised that the coronavirus made the leap from animals to humans at Wuhan' Huanan Seafood Market, which is where the earliest cluster of cases was detected. However, China has so far failed to identify the first person to contract the infection, patient zero,

The WHO admitted that the virus could have been carried to the Huanan Market by an already-infected human, who then spread it to others. The virus, which emerged in 2019n in the Chinese city of Wuhan, has so far infected more than 2.4 million people globally and killed more than 165,000

The WHO on April 20 insisted that it sounded the alarm on the coronavirus right from the very start and had hidden nothing from the US about the deadly pandemic. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had said there were no secrets at the UN agency after being blasted by the United States for allegedly downplaying the initial COVID-19 outbreak in China.

The United States has by far the highest death toll of any country, at more than 40,000 fatalities, and Trump has faced criticism over his handling of the pandemic. Washington is the biggest contributor to the WHO but Trump is freezing funding, alleging that the organisation mismanaged and covered up the spread the virus. Tedros had said the presence of embedded US government secondees working at the WHO headquarters in Geneva meant there was nothing being concealed from Washington.

The US State Department has said the WHO was too late in sounding the alarm over COVID-19 and is overly deferential to China. It questioned why it did not pursue a lead from Taiwan flagged up on December 31, 2019, about reports of atypical pneumonia in Wuhan Debate has raged over the significance of Taiwan's email, which informed the WHO of the reports from Wuhan, and of at least seven patients being isolated -- something that would not be necessary for a non-infectious disease.