The hypothesis came almost simultaneously with the pathogens: For months now the assertion flying in the air, the novel Coronavirus was not of natural origin, but rather man-made – as a kind of bioweapon. Is there anything to it?
Rumors: Coronavirus is a laboratory product
Claim: The Coronavirus was a laboratory product, according to a survey, almost one-third of Americans- most of them say that the exciter was deliberately bred and released been.
Assessment: scientists think that is not plausible.
Facts: Actual absence, until today, the final knowledge of how the human being originally exactly with the novel Coronavirus infected might have. Quickly, it was clear that The causative agent is a type of the since decades well-known group of corona viruses. A long time of expert knowledge that these highly variable viruses can skip between animals and from animals to humans.
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Meanwhile, there are but scientific progress: in mid-March, published researchers in the Swedish micro-biology Professor Kristian Andersen your analysis of the Corona family. The Team went after specifically the question of whether the Virus could artificially be made.
To do this, they examined the Spike proteins protruding from the Virus surface. These spines, the pathogen uses a host cell in the lungs or throat snap and penetrate into it. The study shows in particular two important differences between Sars-CoV-2 and its Relatives: Simplifies the Protein has a different structure and a different composition of its amino acids.
Researchers: Virus not as efficient as a bioweapon
The researchers emphasize, on the basis of the studied characteristics of the new Virus could infect especially easily to human cells. However, the Whole was not designed as optimally as you would expect from a man-made bioweapon. “This is a strong evidence that Sars-CoV-2 is not the product of a deliberate Manipulation,” reads the analysis.
In addition, it is not at all clear why it should have developed Sars-CoV-2 from a yet for people a harmless Virus and not from long-known dangerous Corona-Relatives, such as Mers or Sars. The scientists keep a lab scenario, therefore, not plausible.
Virus circulates longer among the people?
For you just a natural Transmission to humans is out of the question: Either the Virus could be spread directly from bats, or a animal intermediate host used. It is still unclear whether Sars-CoV-2 mutant and the previous, so that it binds more easily to human cells, or only later, when it may already have undetected among the people circulated.
The Berlin-based virologist Christian Drosten, and more than two dozen researchers and scientists reject inside in an article by the beginning of March the theory of the laboratory of origin strictly.
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China’s authorities see it as likely that the virus spread from the sale of the wild animals on the Huannan market is assumed to be in the first affected million metropolis of Wuhan. Many of the first cases of the infections were attributed to this market. A further study of Chinese scientists, it is possible that the market was the primary source, but the Virus has been dragged from elsewhere there.
Sources: “Nature” (report of Kristian Andersen and colleagues), Pew Research Center