Since the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, conspiracy theories have circulated about the virus's origin, questioning whether it was deliberately manufactured or accidentally released during scientific research. Occasionally, research emerges suggesting various possibilities and theories about the virus's origins, but this does not change the fact that the novel virus has claimed millions of lives worldwide.
Recently, a preliminary study published in the journal "The Lancet" on August 6, 2021, led by Elisabetta Tanzi, a professor in the Department of Biomedical Health Sciences at the University of Milan in Italy, reported a potentially significant discovery. The researchers were examining samples collected as part of a measles and rubella surveillance program in Italy, as reported by the newspaper "Asharq Al-Awsat."
#### Italy or China?
Scientists reported finding evidence of genetic material from the "SARS-CoV-2" virus in samples taken from 11 individuals before the pandemic was declared. The earliest of these cases dates back to late summer 2019, indicating that the virus was spreading in Italy well before December 8, which is believed to be the date of the first known case in Wuhan, China. These findings could potentially change the understanding of how the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, how it spread, and how the virus itself operates.
This is not the first study suggesting that "COVID-19 was circulating in Italy long before it was reported in Wuhan." Chinese government media and authorities have promoted such studies as potential evidence that the pandemic may not have originated in Wuhan at all.
#### Genetic Analysis
However, the timeline presented by the Italian authors raises significant questions as they constructed a mutation tree for the virus. This tree suggests that the outbreak in Wuhan occurred before its transmission to Italy in October 2019, implying that the researchers argue the virus migrated from Wuhan to Italy during the summer of 2019. "This aligns with anything we were observing at that time," claims Andrew Rambaut, a molecular evolutionary biologist at the University of Edinburgh in the UK, in his research published in July 2021 in the journal "Genome Biology."
While Zeng Guang, a former chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, claimed in an academic conference in November 2020 that "Wuhan was the place where the coronavirus was first discovered, but it was not the place where it originated," Liang Wannian, the head of the Chinese team in the World Health Organization's investigation of the pandemic's origins, stated that the next phase of investigation should take place in other parts of the world, where transmission of the virus was identified to have occurred before its discovery in Wuhan. This narrative resembles an earlier claim by Chinese authorities suggesting that the virus may have been brought to China via frozen food products.
Nevertheless, Jesse Bloom, a viral evolutionary geneticist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, argues that "there is compelling evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic originated in China, almost certainly in Wuhan." It is clear that attempts by Chinese media to suggest that the pandemic may have originated elsewhere in the world are scientifically misleading.
#### Millions of Deaths Worldwide
The coronavirus has caused the deaths of at least 4,683,586 people globally since the World Health Organization's office in China reported the emergence of the disease at the end of December 2019. The United States is the most affected country in terms of fatalities, followed by Brazil, India, Mexico, and Peru. Considering the excess death rate directly or indirectly related to COVID-19, the World Health Organization estimates that the pandemic's toll may be two to three times greater than the officially reported figures.
