In a new development, Chinese scientists are now claiming that the novel coronavirus originated in India during the July-August period when the heatwave during the summer led to humans and animals sharing the same source of water.

The scientists reportedly mentioned that the virus jumped from animals to humans via contaminated water before they travelled to Wuhan, where the novel virus was first detected. In the research paper titled 'The Early Cryptic Transmission and Evolution of Sars-Cov-2 in Human Hosts,' Chinese scientists have been using phylogenetic analysis to trace the origins of Covid-19. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian reportedly informed a media briefing that "even though China was the first to report coronavirus but doesn't necessarily mean China is where the virus originated." He added, "So we believe the origin process is a complex scientific issue which requires joint efforts on Covid-19 cooperation from the scientific community worldwide. Only by doing so we can guard against future risks because origin tracing is an evolving and sustained process that involves many countries and regions."

The research has apparently ruled out the possibility of Covid-19 originating in Wuhan and has narrowed down to Bangladesh, the US, Greece, Australia, India, Italy, Czech Republic, Russia and Serbia as potential countries. "From May to June 2019, the second-longest recorded heat-wave had rampaged in northern-central India and Pakistan, which created a serious water crisis in this region. The water shortage made wild animals, such as monkeys, engage in the deadly fight over water among each other and would have surely increased the chance of human-wild animal interactions. As known for all, the hygiene condition is imperfect and the public medical system is less efficient in the subcontinent. Thus, it is conceivable that a virus with flu-like symptom could spread undetectably for several months there," the scientists said.

Covid-19 has claimed the lives of more than 1,467,237 people and infected over 63,180,205 people across the world. The virus was first identified in Wuhan, Hubei Province, in China. As the death toll and overall cases began rising rapidly across the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global health emergency and the outbreak was labelled a pandemic. India has recorded 9,431,691 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 137,139 deaths.