The World Health Organization says that the novel Coronavirus originated from bats and not a laboratory as widely suggested.
The WHO stated that its research has found that the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, likely originated in bats.
WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib disclosed this on Tuesday.
All available evidence suggests the virus has an animal origin and is not a manipulated or constructed virus in a lab or somewhere else.
Chaib added, “It is probable, likely that the virus is of animal origin,” and noted that an intermediate animal host “certainly” held the virus before its transmission to humans.
The announcement from the WHO comes after U.S. intelligence officials announced last week that they were looking into whether the coronavirus could have accidentally emerged from a Wuhan lab that was studying viruses in bats.
Regardless of its origins, the absolute facts of the matter are that COVID-19 has infected over 2.5 million people worldwide to date.
America is by far the most-infected country, with over 787,000 confirmed cases, according to John Hopkins data. Spain is a distant second, with over 204,000 cases at the time of this writing
