COVID-19: Controversy on origin of virus resurfaces, thanks to a new study

The controversy on the origin of the COVID-19 virus has resurfaced, thanks to a new study that found the virus has an unusually high efficiency to bind to the human cells.

The modelling research showed that the COVID-19 virus was particularly well adapted to bind to a specific human protein (ACE2) better than any other species tested by the scientists.

"This could either happen by chance or by design. Either it was a lucky fluke for the virus to have such high human binding though it had never encountered a human previously or the virus was adapted to bind human cells, e.g. by human cell culture selection or genetic manipulation," lead researcher Nikolai Petrovsky at the Flinders University, Bedford Park, Australia told DH.

"Our data does not distinguish between any of these possibilities, and nor does any other data that exists. So both possibilities remain open – this is why an enquiry is critical to try and identify the most likely explanation for the origins of the virus," he added.

The origin of the COVID-19 virus remained a subject of intense speculation from the very beginning with many political leaders including the US President Donald Trump claiming it was created in a top secret Chinese laboratory from where the virus was released in the wild.

The latest to make such an allegation is the Union Minister Nitin Gadkari who in two separate interviews last week claimed that COVID-19 was an artificial virus made in a laboratory.

However, the Chinese government and the World Health Organisation denied the charges.

"The WHO encourages researchers around the world to join forces to understand COVID-19 origins. Many researchers have been able to look at its genomic features - and they have found that the evidence does not support the idea that the underlying virus is a laboratory construct" said Tarik Jašarević, WHO spokesperson.

The Australian researchers differ in their opinion.

"There is no evidence that this virus came from either an animal or from a laboratory, so we should either rule both possibilities out or rule them both in. As a scientist we have to say both scenarios remain possible, till we rule one out. This has not been done yet," said Petrovsky who is researching a vaccine against the pandemic.

The study is not yet peer reviewed and made public by putting it on a pre-print server.

Other independent scientists are of the opinion that while the current level of scientific studies indicates more towards animal origin of the virus, new scientific evidence can tilt the theory on the other side.

"The (Petrovsky's) research is an exhaustive in-silico analysis that gives important insights into the evolution of COVID-19. The work provides clarity to how adaptive evolution has worked leading to this pandemic virus," commented Shahid Jameel, an eminent Indian virologist who is the chief executive officer of the Department of Biotechnology and Wellcome Trust India Alliance.

Seeking an inquiry to establish the origin of the virus, Petrovsky said it was wrong to exclude a possibility when that had not been scientifically ruled out.