New data links origin of Covid-19 pandemic to raccoon dogs in Wuhan market

It also suggests that Chinese scientists have given an incomplete account of the evidence that could fill in the details of how the virus spread in the South China market.

Jeremy Kamil, Ph.D., a virus expert at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, who was not involved in the study, said the findings suggest that “samples from the market, including early Covid-19 strains, are It was contaminated with DNA reads,” he said. animal”.

Dr Kamil said no conclusive evidence has been reached that infected animals caused the pandemic. But he said, “It really puts the illegal animal trade in the spotlight.” rice field.

Chinese scientists published a study looking at the same market sample in February 2022.

In that study, samples were reported to be positive for the coronavirus, but the virus did not come from animals sold at the market, but from infected people who shopped or worked at the market. I was suggesting that

At one point, the same researchers, including officials from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, submitted raw data from market swabs to GISAID, the international repository of viral gene sequences.

An attempt to reach the Chinese scientist by phone on Thursday was unsuccessful.

On March 4th, when Dr. Florence Debarre, an evolutionary biologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, happened to be searching its database for information related to the South China market, she said in an interview that more than usual You mentioned you noticed an array popping up.

Dr. Debarre set them aside, initially confused about whether or not they contained new data, but when he logged back in last week, he found that they contained a large amount of raw data.

Virus experts have been waiting for raw sequence data from the market since they learned of its existence in a February 2022 Chinese report.

Dr Debarre said he warned other scientists, including the leader of the team that will publish a series of studies originating from the market in 2022.

An international team that includes Dr. Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona. Dr. Christian Andersen, a virus expert at the Scripps Research Institute in California. And Dr. Edward Holmes, a biologist at the University of Sydney, started mining new genetic data last week.

One sample in particular caught our attention. It was taken from a cart linked to a particular stall in the Huanan market that Dr. Holmes visited in 2014, said scientists involved in the analysis.

The stall Holmes discovered contained raccoon dogs caged on top of another cage with birds, exactly the kind of environment that would encourage the transmission of the new virus.