Coronavirus likely came from animal, not leaked from laboratory, WHO says

World Health Organization (WHO) investigators reported Tuesday that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, probably jumped from one species to another before infecting humans. It is extremely unlikely the virus leaked from a laboratory, the WHO team said. The preliminary assessment on the possible origins of the pandemic was made during a press conference at the end of a 4-week trip, including 2 weeks of quarantine, to Wuhan, China, the original center of the pandemic. The Chinese and WHO experts reviewed environmental samples from Wuhan’s Huanan Market and thousands of biological samples and case files from more than 200 local hospitals. They said the market was one place where SARS-CoV-2 began spreading rapidly but noted it was not possible to say how the virus arrived there. “The market probably was a setting where that kind of spread could have happened easily, but that is not the whole story,” said Peter Ben Embarek, a Danish food-safety expert who spoke on behalf of the WHO delegation.