[dljones]

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, yes. But take another look at the phylogenetic tree. Those are huge gaps. See also this article describing how good South Africa is at spotting and sequencing variants."The reality is that southern Africa is a top international powerhouse of COVID-19 surveillance." https://www.businessinsider.com/how-southern-africa-detected...

[ufo]

The hypothesis is that it could have originated in a different country and was only identified after it arrived in South Africa.