Study pours cold water on lab-made coronavirus theory: Australian media

SYDNEY - A study found coronavirus discovered in bats in Laos extremely adept at infecting human cells, which pours cold water on the theory COVID-19 is so infectious it had to be created by humans in a lab.

The study, featured last week in an article in local Australian newspaper, the West Australian, collected faecal samples from bats in the southeast Asian nation which were found to contain coronaviruses that were similar to COVID-19.

According to the virologists who analysed the samples, the viruses carry a molecular hook on their surface that resembles that of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that latches onto human cells.

"Our results contribute to understanding the origin of (COVID-19), they show that sequences very close to those of the early strains of (COVID-19) responsible for the pandemic exist in nature and are found in several... bat species," the report cited the study's authors as saying.

"Our results therefore support the hypothesis that (COVID-19) could originally result from a recombination of sequences pre-existing in... bats living in the extensive limestone cave systems of South-East Asia and South China which provides ideal conditions for interspecies interactions."

The study, which is currently awaiting peer review, was conducted by virologists at Institut Pasteur, a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases and vaccines, and researchers from the University of Lao.