All available evidence suggests that the new coronavirus has an animal origin, and is not a virus "manipulated or constructed" in a lab or somewhere else, World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson Fadela Chaib said in Geneva on Tuesday.

"WHO is, as I said, a science-based organization, and we think the origin is animal," the spokesperson told journalists at a virtual press briefing. "It (the novel coronavirus) most probably has its ecological reservoir in bats, but how the virus came from bat to human is still to be seen, to be discovered."

"There is certainly an intermediary host, another animal, that transmitted the disease from bats to humans," she added.

The WHO spokesperson underlined that the WHO is combating two pandemics. "We have the pandemic with the virus, but we are also combating 'infodemic'. And when you have a new virus, like this one, it is to be expected that a lot of spurious theories about the origin of the virus be relayed."

She pledged that the WHO welcomes all countries to support efforts to find the origin of the virus, noting that several working groups, including Chinese experts, are very active trying to find the origin of this virus.

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