London: The former director of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated on Friday that there is no proof that the virus that causes COVID originated from animals.

George Gao was in charge of the organisation when COVID first surfaced in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019. He was speaking at a summit in London on pandemic preparedness.

People still believe that some animals serve as hosts or reservoirs, according to Gao. To cut a long story short, there is no proof as to what animals the virus originated from.

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Although the COVID-19 pandemic's origins are still unknown, some claim that China has obstructed research efforts. According to the Chinese government, it has always backed efforts to look into the source.

According to the World Health Organisation, all origin theories for COVID-19 are still viable, including the theory that the virus originated in a high-security Wuhan laboratory used to study harmful pathogens.
China rejects any such connection.

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The virus is thought to have originated from animals, most likely bats, according to WHO's analysis of the evidence to date. Chinese researchers uploaded information from the early stages of the pandemic to a global database last month.

More than 1,000 environmental and animal samples were collected in January 2020 at the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, and it included genetic sequences discovered there.

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The information suggested that raccoon dogs were "the most likely conduits" of the disease, according to a group of international researchers. Environmental samples that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, contained DNA from a variety of animal species, including raccoon dogs.