Probing Evolution
Covid-19 Was a Ticking Time-Bomb, Scientists Warned Since 2007
SARS-related coronaviruses have always been around, so spillover is just a matter of time.
The Covid-19 virus, SARS-CoV-2, came from bats. How it got spread to humans, however, is still up to debate. The two prior coronaviruses epidemics — SARS in 2003 and MERS in 2012 — also originated from bats. Given that SARS and MERS happened, was Covid-19 foreseeable?
A time-bomb, scientists said in 2007
Scientists knew SARS was not going to be the last bat coronavirus infecting humans, let alone MERS or Covid-19. Since the SARS epidemic in 2003, over 4000 papers on coronavirus were soon published, according to a 2007 review led by Prof. Kwok Yung Yuen, Chair of Infectious Diseases of the Department of Microbiology of the University of Hong Kong, who is also a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Surgeons, and Pathologists.
Owing to the thousands of academic papers, scientists have learned many things about coronaviruses. In fact, it is only after the SARS epidemic that science discovered the NL63 and HKU1 coronaviruses that have been causing mild-to-moderate diseases in humans all the while.
