Business Continuity and the Pandemic Threat - Learning from COVID-19 while preparing for the next pandemic

CHAPTER 3: AND THE ORIGIN OF THE CORONAVIRUS WAS…

So, where did this coronavirus pandemic really originate?

“A leak from a laboratory, a scientist doing field work, or a hunter infected in the wild?”

(Gracie, 2020)

Initially, it appeared that Wuhan was Ground Zero for the coronavirus. The official Chinese explanation linked the outbreak to the Huanan wet market in Wuhan, where meat, poultry and seafood were sold alongside live animals. However, it wasn’t very long before conspiracy theories started to circulate, often supported by nothing more than anecdotal evidence.

State-sponsored bio-terrorism has been one of the more popular hypotheses I have come across. It was, after all, only two years earlier that the indiscriminate attempted poisoning ...