MOSCOW, Jun 10The Scientific Advisory Group on Emerging Dangerous Pathogens (SAGO), formed by the World Health Organization (WHO), said that the theory of the laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2 needs further research. In 2021, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the establishment of the Scientific Advisory Group on the origin of new pathogens (SAGO), which included 27 people from different countries, including Russia, the UK, Germany, China, India and others. As noted in the report, the available epidemiological and sequencing data suggest that ancestral strains of SARS-CoV-2 are of zoonotic origin, and its closest genetically related viruses are betacoronaviruses identified in horseshoe bats in China in 2013 and Laos in 2020. However, neither the origin of the virus, nor natural/intermediate hosts, nor cases of transmission of the virus to humans have yet been identified. Although a preliminary investigation confirmed that the seafood market in Wuhan, China played an important role in the spread of the pandemic, the source of SARS-CoV-2 and its mechanism «SAGO notes that no new evidence has emerged to assess laboratory leakage as a route of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 to the human population and recommends further investigation of this and all other possible options,» the experts write. in document.
Fight Against Coronavirus Still Continues, Putin Says The Washington Post reports that group members from Brazil, China and Russia have opposed calls for further investigation into the «lab leak» theory. parts of the country (Hubei Province). At the same time, the first cases were somehow connected with the local seafood market. In early January 2020, it was officially announced in China that a new type of coronavirus was the cause of the outbreak of viral pneumonia of unknown origin. And already on March 11, 2020, the head of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that the spread of the new coronavirus is in the nature of a pandemic. In March 2021, the WHO published the full version of the report of an international group of experts of the organization on a visit to Wuhan to identify the origin of the coronavirus, in which they called it a leak from laboratories «highly unlikely». The report also states that a new type of coronavirus was most likely transmitted to humans from bats through another animal. Another version of the origin of the coronavirus — direct transmission to humans from an animal — experts added to the list of hypotheses «from possible to probable.» The WHO mission also called a «possible» version of the origin of the virus through chilled foods.
