Coronavirus
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- yuekit1
Coronavirus outbreak may have started in September, say British scientists
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/…
Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, originated from bats. It has been found to share 96 per cent identical genes with a coronavirus isolated by Chinese scientists from bat droppings in the southwestern province of Yunnan in 2013.
But there were hundreds of mutations between Sars-CoV-2 and the one in Yunnan, and a coronavirus usually acquires one mutation per month. Some scientists have therefore suspected the virus may have been spreading quietly in host animals and humans for years to gradually evolve to a highly adaptive form that could infect humans.
The first outbreak could be a recent event involving the last few mutations that completed the leap from harmless strain to deadly pathogen, according to the Cambridge team.
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The Cambridge study also raised some new questions. The first strain isolated and reported by Chinese scientists was actually younger than the original type that caused the outbreak. Why the US had more strains genetically closer to a bat virus than Wuhan has prompted heated debates in the research community.
One explanation, according to Forster, was that the original strain may have first emerged in China but was more adaptive to the American population and environment.
- Some reports put the start as early as August 2019********
- ...for the outbreak - but yeah the virus is reported to be much much older so all this seems 100%********
- 40-70 years to mutate from the virus in batskingsteven
- Some reports put the start as early as August 2019