Bat Scientists Warn That the World May Never Know Covid-19 Origins – The Wall Street Journal

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, scientists all over the world have been struggling to pin down the origin of the coronavirus that caused it.

Linfa Wang knows they may never succeed.

Dr. Wang, a professor in the emerging infectious diseases program at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, is an expert in bat viruses. He has joined the hunt for the origin of Covid-19 even though he and fellow scientists are still searching for the precise source of a different coronavirus: the one that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. That virus emerged in 2002 and killed nearly 800 people world-wide.

Research on the origin of SARS and other deadly viruses offers a cautionary example of the manifold challenges that confound the pursuit of the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.

SARS started as an outbreak in China, rapidly traveled around the world infecting and killing people, and disrupted the global economy. The Chinese government was criticized at home and abroad for not sharing information quickly enough with the public and with World Health Organization officials trying to get a handle on the disease.

See more here:

Bat Scientists Warn That the World May Never Know Covid-19 Origins - The Wall Street Journal