The senior expert of the WHO laboratory, Frank Konings, named the main versions of the transmission of the coronavirus, the broadcast recording is available on the Twitter account of the World Health Organization (WHO).
According to him, SARS-CoV-2 could be transmitted to humans directly from bat to humans and quickly and completely adapt. Conings considered this scenario possible, but unlikely. “According to the second, more probable, the virus jumped from a bat to one or several species of animals, where it had the opportunity to adapt to them, and only then it switched to humans,” he stressed.
Konings added that studies are underway with various animals, including agricultural and domestic animals, to determine how susceptible they are to infection and whether they might be a reservoir for the virus. He noted that in the future they may also need a vaccine.
Earlier, the director of the WHO's health emergencies program, Michael Ryan, said that the coronavirus began to spread around the world after infecting several zero patients. According to him, in the event of a COVID-19 pandemic, we can talk about more than one primary infection, since the transmission of the pathogen to humans is possible from several animals. “There is more and more information that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is found in various countries. It was recently identified in bats, and we have also seen other potential vectors in different places, ”the specialist explained.
