Since 2019 when COVID-19 emerged in China, scientists worldwide have been trying to ascertain the origin of the virus.
The two major theories are a natural spillover from bats to an animal source and then to humans or a laboratory accident. A related question is whether the virus emerged from nature or was the result of human-made genetic manipulation.
Until recently, although no animal intermediary between virus-carrying bats and humans has been identified, Chinese scientists and many of their Western counterparts, including prominent American researchers, argued that animals transmitted the virus to humans. They downplayed the lab leak theory and essentially dismissed the possibility that the virus was engineered rather than a creation of nature.
