With the deadly coronavirus engulfing people across the world, a team of scientists have come up with new revelation. They say that the COVID 19 could have spread among humans before decades.
According to findings published in the journal Nature Medicine, the virus could have possibly been transmitted from animals to humans much before it was first detected in Wuhan province of China. In fact, there are speculations that it could have been as long as a decade.
The study, which was conducted by an international team of scientists from Australia, Britain and the US, was released on March 17 in the scientific journal.
“Then, as a result of gradual evolutionary changes over years or perhaps decades. The virus eventually gained the ability to spread from human to human and cause serious, often life-threatening disease,” Dr Francis Collins, director of the US National Institute of Health, said in an article published on the institute’s website.
Besides them, an Italian professor Giuseppe Remuzzi had pointed at “strange pneumonias” in Italy since last November. This could mean that Covid-19, which proved to be equally fatal in the country. It could have reached Europe before anyone knew about it.
Prof Remuzzi, director of the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan, said he would not be surprised if some asymptomatic carriers had travelled around China or even abroad before December last year.
The unusual cases of pneumonia in November and December could mean that virus was already spreading in Lombardy, Italy’s worst-hit region, before Wuhan made headlines, he said.
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