Where did COVID-19 come from? Utah researcher says new study confirms virus originated in market, not lab

Does new research by a University of Utah virologist and others into the origins of COVID-19 rule out, once and for all, the theory that the virus came from a Chinese laboratory?

“The short answer to that is yes,” Stephen Goldstein, a virologist and postdoctoral researcher at the U. School of Medicine, told reporters during a virtual news conference Tuesday to announce the publication of a study he co-authored in Science.

“The only place that this virus was circulating in December 2019 is the area immediately surrounding the Huanan market, which is quite a distance away from the Wuhan Institute of Virology that’s been suspected as the source,” he said, noting there were initially two separate versions of the virus.

That’s not the single strain “you might expect if a lab worker was infected and then brought the virus to somewhere else in the city” of Wuhan, Goldstein said. Given that some 75% of new such infections don’t spread, he said to get two versions of the virus spreading suggested there were at least eight at the start.