The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, widely believed to have originated in China, may have been lying dormant across the world before emerging under favourable environmental conditions, claims a medical expert.
Dr Tom Jefferson, a senior associate tutor at Oxford University's Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM), argues mounting evidence suggests the virus was present elsewhere in the world before it surfaced in China.
Traces of the virus have been discovered in sewage samples from Brazil, Italy and Spain, pre-dating its emergence in China. Last week, Spanish virologists announced they had founded traces of the disease in waste water samples collected in March 2019 - nine months before the virus was detected in China's Hubei Province.
Italian scientists also claim to have discovered traces of SARS-CoV-2 in sewage samples from both Milan and Turin, collected in mid-December. This again predates the first cluster of cases recorded in the Hubei Province.
Dr Jefferson suggests evidence such as this indicates the virus originated as a global organism that developed under suitable environmental conditions.
In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Dr Jefferson has called for an investigation into how and why COVID-19 appears to thrive in environments such as meatpacking plants and food factories.
"There is a high concentration where sewage is 4°C, which is the ideal temperature for it to be stabled and presumably activated. And meatpacking plants are often at 4°C," he told The Telegraph.
"These outbreaks need to be investigated properly."
The expert believes the inquiry could unveil possible new pathways of transmission , such as shared bathroom facilities or sewerage systems.
"There is quite a lot of evidence of huge amounts of the virus in sewage all over the place, and an increasing amount of evidence there is faecal transmission," he told The Telegraph.
Dr Jefferson also cited "strange" similarities between COVID-19 and the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918, noting that more than 20 percent of Western Samoa's population died of the disease despite having no international interaction. His theory is disputed, however, by the common explanation that the flu reached Western Samoa through New Zealand cargo ships, such as the SS Talune.
"The explanation could only be that these agents don't come or go anywhere. They are always here and something ignites them, maybe human density or environmental conditions, and this is what we should look for."
