Chinese Research Team: "COVID-19 Likely First Emerged in India and Bangladesh... Most Variants Found"

In October last year, medical staff in Qingdao, Shandong Province, China, collected specimens from citizens for testing of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Jeong Dong-hoon] A Chinese research team has claimed that the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) may have already existed in several countries including India before it emerged in China.

On the 28th, according to Hong Kong's South China Morning Post (SCMP), Dr. Xian Libing's team from the Shanghai Institute of Life Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, announced research results stating that "the first human transmission may have occurred in the Indian subcontinent, such as India or Bangladesh."

The researchers used a method of counting the number of mutations in strains from 17 countries based on the judgment that "the fewer the mutations in a strain, the closer it is to the original form of COVID-19." As a result, they claimed that strains from eight countries including Australia, Bangladesh, India, Greece, the United States, Russia, Italy, and the Czech Republic had the fewest mutations. In particular, they considered India and Bangladesh as the most likely to have the greatest strain diversity among them.

The research team suggested that during the record heatwave and drought in India last May, animals and humans shared the same water source, and in this process, the virus may have been transmitted from animals to humans. They explained that the low incidence of severe cases in India, where the young population ratio is high, made it difficult to detect the virus.

Part of this research was published in the academic journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, and another related study was posted on the preprint site of the medical journal The Lancet without yet undergoing peer review.

However, Professor Mark Suchard of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), USA, criticized this study, saying, "It would be difficult to identify the original virus by arbitrarily selecting the strain that appears to have the smallest difference from other strains in a random (sample) group."

While the World Health Organization (WHO) is investigating the origin of COVID-19, Mike Ryan, head of the WHO Emergency Response Team, stated at a briefing on the 27th (local time) that the theory of "COVID-19 originating outside China" is "very speculative."