The World Health Organisation (WHO) has shot down the conspiracy theory that the novel coronavirus was made in a laboratory.
A conspiracy theory has been doing the rounds, suggesting that Covid-19 was brewed by scientists before being released into the world.
But the WHO wants to put this theory to bed and stop the spread of disinformation.
WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told a Geneva news briefing: "All available evidence suggests the virus has an animal origin and is not manipulated or constructed in a lab or somewhere else.
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"It is probable, likely, that the virus is of animal origin."
Scientists are still trying to determine what animal the coronavirus came from, with many suggesting bats had some role to play.
A study published in The Lancet looked at the genome sequences of the coronavirus, given the name 2019-nCoV, obtained from nine patients in China who had contracted the virus.
Researchers compared the 2019-nCoV genetic sequence with a library of viral sequences and found the most closely related viruses were two coronaviruses that originated in bats - sharing 88 percent of the same genetic sequence.
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The study's authors say this link points towards the virus starting with bats.
However, according to the report, no bats were sold at the Huanan seafood market - where the virus originated - so there could be another animal in the middle of the chain, passing the disease from bat to human.
The Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention's Guizhen Wu, who co-authored the study, wrote: "It seems likely that another animal host is acting as an intermediate host between bats and humans."
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The study adds weight to a previous one, which also singled out bats as the most likely cause.
A research team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the People's Liberation Army and Institute Pasteur of Shanghai released a statement alongside their study to say: "The Wuhan coronavirus' natural host could be bats... but between bats and humans there may be an unknown intermediate."
A paper published in February suggests that intermediary animal could have been a snake, a turtle or a pangolin.
Out of the three, the study's authors leaned more towards turtles, as they are traded more frequently than pangolins and are known as a virus reservoir because they are capable of being a host to potential diseases.
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Scientists are still racing to find the exact source of Covid-19 as it may hold the key to producing a vaccine.
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