[What do we know about the origin of COVID-19 three years later?] / ¿Qué sabemos del origen del COVID-19 tres años después?

ABSTRACT

More than three years have passed since the first case of a new coronavirus infection (SARS-CoV-2) in the city of Wuhan (Hubei, China). The Wuhan Institute of Virology was founded in that city in 1956 and the country's first biosafety level 4 laboratory opened within that center in 2015. The coincidence that the first cases of infection emerged in the city where the virology institute's headquarters is located, the failure to 100% identify the virus' RNA in any of the coronaviruses isolated in bats, and the lack of evidence on a possible intermediate animal host in the contagion's transmission make it so that at present, there are doubts about the real origin of SARS-CoV-2. This article will review two theories SARS-CoV-2 as a virus of zoonotic origin or as a leak from the high-level biosafety laboratory in Wuhan.