{"id":11629,"date":"2026-03-11T18:14:43","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T23:14:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11629"},"modified":"2026-03-11T20:03:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T01:03:06","slug":"recent-pandemic-viruses-including-sar-cov-2-spread-directly-to-people-without-adaptation-researchers-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/03\/11\/recent-pandemic-viruses-including-sar-cov-2-spread-directly-to-people-without-adaptation-researchers-say\/","title":{"rendered":"Recent pandemic viruses, including SAR-CoV-2, spread directly to people without adaptation, researchers say"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cidrap.umn.edu\/covid-19\/recent-pandemic-viruses-including-sar-cov-2-spread-directly-people-without-adaptation\">CIDRAP<\/a> Contrary to prevailing belief, an evolutionary&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0092867426001716\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"analysis, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">analysis<\/a>&nbsp;finds no evidence that most viruses with epidemic or pandemic potential that jumped from animals to people were shaped by selection in a lab or prolonged evolution in an intermediate host\u2014challenging claims that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was engineered in a lab.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A University of California (UC) San Diego\u2013led research team analyzed viral genomes to characterize natural selection under the hypothesis that zoonotic viruses (Ebola, Marburg, mpox, influenza A, and SARS-CoV-2) need to adapt before infecting people and achieving sustained human-to-human spread. They focused on the evolutionary period right before outbreaks, when viruses would be expected to leave detectable traces of any substantial adaptation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The researchers validated their approach using known examples of artificially selected viruses grown in cell culture or lab animals, which showed clear and reproducible evolutionary footprints distinct from natural transmission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The findings were published late last week in\u00a0<em>Cell<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cidrap.umn.edu\/covid-19\/recent-pandemic-viruses-including-sar-cov-2-spread-directly-people-without-adaptation\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CIDRAP Contrary to prevailing belief, an evolutionary&nbsp;analysis&nbsp;finds no evidence that most viruses with epidemic or pandemic potential that jumped from animals to people were shaped by selection in a lab or prolonged evolution in an intermediate host\u2014challenging claims that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was engineered in a lab.&nbsp; A University of California (UC) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11629"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11630,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11629\/revisions\/11630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}