Fresh reports point to Wuhan market as origin of outbreak

NEW DELHI: Three studies released by scientists have unearthed new clues about the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, indicating that the outbreak began in a market that sold live animals in China’s Wuhan, according to Nature.

While two reports trace the origin of the outbreak to the huge market in central China, the third report indicates that the coronavirus spilled from animals into humans at least “twice in November or December 2019”. All three reports are preprints, and have not been published in a peer-reviewed journal so far.

“These analyses add weight to original suspicions that the pandemic began at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which many of the people who were infected earliest with SARS-COV-2 had visited. The preprints contain genetic analyses of coronavirus samples collected from the market and from people infected in December 2019 and January 2020, as well as geolocation analyses connecting these samples to a section of the market where live animals were sold,” the report said.

“This is extremely strong evidence,” it quoted Kristian Andersen, a virologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, and an author on two of the reports, as saying.

A joint study by China and the World Health Organization (WHO) last year largely ruled out the theory that Covid-19 originated in a laboratory.

A Who-led team of experts was in and around Wuhan for four weeks along with Chinese scientists. It later said in a joint report that the Sars-cov-2 virus was probably transmitted from bats to humans through another animal. It flagged the need for more research on the issue.

The latest studies do not contain definitive evidence about what type of animal could have harboured the virus before it transmitted to humans. “Andersen speculates that the culprits could be raccoon dogs, a squat dog-like mammal used for food and for their fur in China. One of the studies he coauthored suggests that raccoon dogs were sold in a section of the market where several positive samples were collected. And reports show that the animals are capable of harbouring other types of coronaviruses,” the report in Nature said.