New theory claims it was not China: "This is where it all started"

An early version of COVID-19, which seems to have been created in the laboratory, was discovered in samples from a Chinese biotechnology company, writes Sara Knapton, the Science Editor for The Daily Telegraph.
This finding justifies claims that the virus may have originated as a laboratory experiment that accidentally leaked.
Bioinformatics experts from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and the University of Lornd in Budapest made the discovery by chance while examining genetic data from soil samples collected from Antarctica in late 2018 and early 2019.
The samples were sent to Sangon Biotech in Shanghai for testing in December 2019, where they were contaminated with a hitherto unknown variant of COVID-19.
The variant has mutations that bridge the gap between the bat coronavirus and the earliest strain from Wuhan, so it can be a version of the ancestral virus, i.e. the already existing one, writes Daily Telegraph.

Unique mutations

The samples also contain hamster and monkey DNA, suggesting that the early virus may have been bred in animal cell lines.
"Unique mutations suggest that it is a variant of ancestors. So, if it was determined, say, in mid-December, before anyone identified the virus in humans and tried to grow it in laboratories, then it indicates secret samples in laboratories in 2019", Viscount Matt Ridley, author of 'Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19'.
"They are not from seals or penguins, but from African green monkeys and Chinese hamsters. Both species are the source of the most commonly used laboratory cell lines," Ridley said of the discovered animal DNA.
The exact date when the DNA isolation was performed is not certain. However, researchers say that if it happened in December...