source for highlighted study: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0300891620974755?journalCode=tmja

China also claims to have found a perfect match of the Wuhan strain in Italy predating the first case in Wuhan. I couldn't dig up the exact study so i didn't screenshot it here, but here's a link anyway for completeness.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3113444/coronavirus-italian-scientists-find-perfect-match-wuhan-strain

Even without that though, it's looking pretty likely that COVID-19 actually originated in italy.

edit: found the new study!

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33292923/

We describe the earliest evidence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in a patient in Italy, ≈3 months before Italy’s first reported COVID-19 case. These findings, in agreement with other evidence of early COVID-19 spread in Europe, advance the beginning of the outbreak to late autumn 2019

    • cilantrofellow [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Just want to say it doesn’t need to be anywhere bats and pangolins coexist persay, just in any organism/cell where both coronaviruses infect. I know that difference is subtle but I think it’s meaningful to specify, particularly since these can be diseases optimized for one clade, but manage to exist suboptimally in others.