Britain’s coronavirus epidemic may have been seeded from Singapore, South Korea or Hong Kong - rather than China - the first genetic analysis of virus evolution suggests.

Using ‘phylogenetic’ techniques that are usually reserved for tracing the origins of our early human ancestors, researchers at Cambridge University discovered that there have been three distinct variants of coronavirus since the disease emerged in Wuhan in December.

Dubbed A, B and C, the three types have followed different paths throughout the globe, possibly because they have mutated to be better at infecting specific populations

Variant ‘A’ is the ancestral strain and is most closely related to the coronavirus found in bats and pangolins. Scientists believe the disease jumped into humans from one of the creatures at Wuhan Market.

The second type ‘B’ - which is most common in mainland China - is derived from ‘A’, and separated by two mutations, while ‘C’ is in turn a ‘daughter’ of ‘B’.

But interestingly it is type ‘C’ that initially infected Britain and Europe and that variant is not found in mainland China at all.