Scientists slap down claim that snakes caused the Wuhan virus outbreak

The Wuhan virus that is currently sweeping the news has been subjected to a bit of controversy surrounding the topic of what animals caused this virus to spread to humans.

The virus, which is called 2019-nCoV, is a coronavirus, and just yesterday, I reported on a research paper that claimed that the virus' most likely origin was snakes. Now, other scientists have said that the research team has no proof to make the claim that the virus' origin comes from snakes; instead, it should only be able to infect mammals and birds. David Robertson, a virologist at the University of Glasgow, UK, says, "Nothing supports snakes being involved".

Paulo Eduardo Brandao, a virologist at the University of Sao Paulo is currently investigating whether snakes can contract coronavirus says, "They have no evidence snakes can be infected by this new coronavirus and serve as a host for it. There's no consistent evidence of coronaviruses in hosts other than mammals and Aves (birds)." It seems that there is a lot of confusion towards what animal has caused this outbreak, and at the moment, no one really knows which animal it is. Only time will tell. For more information on this topic, check out this article from Nature here.