New COVID origins data point to raccoon dogs at Wuhan market

The genetic sequences were recently uploaded to the world’s biggest public virus database, then removed, but not before a French biologist spotted the information

Genetic material collected at a Chinese market near where the first human cases of COVID-19 were identified show raccoon dog DNA co-mingled with the virus, suggesting the pandemic may have originated from animals, not a lab, international experts say.

Other experts have not yet verified their analysis, which has yet to appear in a peer-reviewed journal.

“These data do not provide a definitive answer to how the pandemic began, but every piece of data is important to moving us closer to that answer,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday.

He criticized China for not sharing the genetic information earlier, saying “data could have and should have been shared three years ago.”

The samples were collected from surfaces at the Huanan seafood market in early 2020 in Wuhan, where the first human cases of COVID-19 were found in late 2019.

Tedros said the genetic sequences were recently uploaded to the world’s biggest public virus database by scientists at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. They were removed, but not before a French biologist spotted the information and shared it with a group of scientists based outside China that’s looking into the origins of the coronavirus.

The data show that some of the COVID-positive samples collected from a stall known to be involved in the wildlife trade also contained raccoon dog genes, indicating the animals may have been infected by the virus. “There’s a good chance that the animals that deposited that DNA also deposited the virus,” said Stephen Goldstein, a virologist at the University of Utah who was involved in analyzing the data. “If you were to go and do environmental sampling in the aftermath of a zoonotic spillover event … this is basically exactly what you would expect to find.”

The canines, named for their raccoon-like faces, are often bred for their fur and sold for meat in animal markets across China.

In February, it was reported that the U.S. Department of Energy had assessed “with low confidence” that the virus had leaked from a lab. Others in the U.S. intelligence community disagree, believing it more likely it first came from animals.