Has the Covid-19 already been circulating for ten years in Southeast Asia?
According to researchers at the Natural History Museum in Paris, Covid-19 could have its origin in bats in Cambodia in 2010. AP - JAKE SCHOELLKOPF
Text by: RFI Follow
5 mins
What if the Covid-19 did not come from China?
What if it had instead been imported to Wuhan from Southeast Asia, and Cambodia in particular, where the population seems to have developed collective immunity against the coronavirus by living for years in contact with it?
This is the hypothesis defended by Alexandre Hassanin, researcher at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, and supported by new data which have just been published.
Publicity
Read more
The "Chinese virus".
Racist-smacking expression was relentlessly agitated by former US President Donald Trump in April 2020. China immediately saw red.
She has never ceased to assert that the Covid-19 did not come from her home, not hesitating, she either, to use conspiracy theories such as that of a quasi-voluntary importation of the coronavirus into China by the military. Americans.
For good measure, Beijing ended up allowing a team of World Health Organization (WHO) investigators to spend a month in Wuhan, under high political surveillance.
Unsurprisingly result: little access to data, no new progress on the origins of the pandemic and the trail of a still privileged animal origin.
►
To read also: Covid-19: in Wuhan, the WHO is confined to hypotheses on the origin of the pandemic
What if China is telling the truth?
If the Sars-Cov2 virus did not come from home but from abroad?
In an article published in early February on the site
The Conversation,
Alexandre Hassanin supports the hypothesis of a provenance from Southeast Asia.
“
In 2010,
writes the researcher at the Museum of Natural History in Paris,
researchers who went on an expedition to Cambodia to study the local bats took samples.
These samples, stored in freezers for ten years, were recently analyzed by a team from the National Museum of Natural History.
The virus tests are positive: the sequencing reveals a great similarity with the current SARS-CoV-2, responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic.
"
Importation of the virus into Wuhan in question
Invited by
Florent Guignard
,
Alexandre Hassanin
points to “
a bundle of arguments
” which reinforces the hypothesis of a Southeast Asian origin of Covid-19: “
In all these countries of Southeast Asia, which represent the niche ecological aspect of the virus, where SARS-CoV-2 viruses are believed to circulate naturally in bats, this is precisely where the epidemic is having the least impact.
"
What is not yet known with certainty today, underlines the researcher, is how the virus arrived in Wuhan, the first focus of the pandemic.
But there again, he presents some leads: "
There is data which shows us that Malaysian pangolins, therefore who come from Southeast Asia, were contaminated in the past before the Covid-19 epidemic, c 'was in 2017 and 2019, pangolins seized in China, carriers of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
So that means there have been at least two virus imports from Southeast Asia in the past.
And this is clearly due to the trafficking of pangolins from Southeast Asia to China.
"
"
As soon as you put in contact human populations who have never been in contact with these animals which are potentially carriers of bacteria and viruses, you run the risk of igniting the fuse which leads to the epidemic
", concludes Alexandre Hassanin.
Back from Wuhan, WHO experts believe that Covid-19 originated in bats and may have been transmitted to humans via another mammal.
However, they do not know where and when the pandemic really started, even if no major outbreak was reported in Wuhan or elsewhere before December 2019.
In the White House, now headed by Joe Biden, the expression "
Chinese virus
" is no longer used
.
But the United States continues to put pressure on Beijing.
"
To better understand this pandemic and prepare for the next, China must make available its data on the first days of the epidemic,
" asked Jake Sullivan, the National Security adviser to the new US president.
►
To listen: The WHO on a mission in Wuhan, the story of the origins of the virus locked by Beijing
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Coronavirus
China
Vietnam
Laos
Cambodia
On the same subject
Origins of the Covid-19: mixed mission for WHO experts in China
The bottom of the infox, the chronicle
WHO on mission in Wuhan, the story of the origins of the virus locked by Beijing
Covid-19: in Wuhan, the WHO is confined to hypotheses on the origin of the pandemic