Fact Check: Covid-19 originated from China in 2019; viral reports are misleading

A post claiming that Coronavirus has been there since 2013 and did not originate from China is viral on social media.

By Newsmeter Network  Published on  21 Jan 2022 5:00 AM GMT
Fact Check:  Covid-19 originated from China in 2019; viral reports are misleading

Hyderabad: A post claiming that Coronavirus has been there since 2013 and did not originate from China is viral on social media.

"Is this true? In this case, the argument about corona has been originated from China cannot be true. This type of virus is there long before as well, but they believed it to be less powerful/ harmless, What's the reason for this sudden outbreak of corona, that's there since 2013," reads the post.

Click here to view.

Fact Check:

The claim is Misleading.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has made it clear on its website that the SAR-CoV-2 virus, which originated in China in 2019, is another type of virus that has evolved from the Novel Coronavirus family. In February 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) officially named the new type of virus Covid-19.

A Google search for the information in the news article turned up an article published by the BBC in February 2013 that reported that a patient infected with a new respiratory illness similar to the deadly SARS virus has died in the UK.

Also, the threat posed by the virus is thought to be minimal.

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is a viral respiratory illness that is new to humans. It was first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and has since spread to several other countries, including the United States.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/mers/index.html

MERS-CoV is a type of virus belonging to the novel coronavirus family, the new coronavirus type was first identified in 2012 in Saudi Arabia. The WHO has identified the coronavirus as a large family of viruses that cause diseases ranging from the common cold to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Based on these details, the news article shared in the post reported on the spread of the MERS-Cov virus in the Middle East in 2012. It did not report about Covid-19 which came to light in 2019.

https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/middle-east-respiratory-syndrome-coronavirus-(mers-cov)

In 2012, 'Virology' magazine wrote that 'coronavirus disease was first discovered in 1931. The first coronavirus (HCoV-229E) isolated from humans was in 1965'. Before COVID-19, two other disease outbreaks (SARS-CoV in 2003 and MERS‐CoV in 2012) were also caused by Coronaviruses. More information about the previous strains of Coronavirus and the SARS-CoV-2 (previously called 2019-nCoV) can be seen here and types of Human Coronaviruses can be found be here.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780443073670000409

https://www.who.int/ith/diseases/sars/en/

https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/middle-east-respiratory-syndrome-coronavirus-(mers-cov)

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/types.html

Hence, the claim is false. The news article published in 2013 was about the spread of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV), one of the types of coronavirus, and not about the Covid-19.

Claim Review:Corona has been there since 2013 and it cannot be true that it originated from China.
Claimed By:Social Media Users
Claim Reviewed By:Newsmeter
Claim Source:Social Media
Claim Fact Check:Misleading
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