Claims China officials knew virus risk of Huanan market
Seafood market used as an example of outbreak source five years ago, scientist claims
Wuhan’s leading public health officials said five years ago that the wet market at the centre of Covid outbreak was a pandemic risk, a British scientist has revealed.
In 2014 Dr Eddie Holmes, an evolutionary biologist and virologist, was taken to the Huanan seafood market by the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control, using it as an example of the type of place where an animal-tohuman virus “spillover” could occur.
Dr Holmes, who is now at the University of Sydney, said the visit was part of a wider project to hunt for new pathogens with pandemic potential in China. He said: “The discussion was, ‘where could a disease emerge?’ Well, here’s the place – that’s why I went”.
“I’ve been to a few of these markets, but this was a big one – it felt like a disease incubator – exactly the sort of place you would expect a disease to emerge.”
Dr Holmes remembers the nowshuttered market as a sprawling network of narrow covered streets. It was late afternoon and not particularly crowded, but there were “crates of wildlife stacked on top of each other”, including fish, snakes, rodents and raccoon dogs – foxlike animals susceptible to Covid-19.
The Huanan market gained global notoriety when the first cases of Covid-19 (initially reported as a “mystery pneumonia” in December 2019) were found in people who worked and shopped there.
Of 41 people hospitalised who were officially identified as having Covid, two-thirds were exposed to the market, which was closed and sealed off by the Wuhan authorities on January 1, 2020.
Experts believe the site played a
significant role in the initial circulation of Covid-19, either as the site of the initial spillover event, when an animal virus jumps to humans, or as an “amplifier” of the early epidemic.
A report from the World Health Organisation on the origins of Sarscov-2 said though “no firm conclusion” could be drawn on the precise role of Huanan market, it found the virus most likely jumped from bats to humans via an as yet unknown animal.
The wildlife trade in general, and wet markets in particular, have long been linked to emerging new pathogens. There is evidence that Sars jumped to humans at markets
in Guangdong, China, in 2002.
In early 2020 Chinese researchers collected close to 1000 samples from Huanan market, swabbing everything from rubbish bins, doors and stalls to stray cats and mice, and found widespread contamination “compatible with introduction of the virus through infected people, infected animals or contaminated products”.
The first person with a known link to the market became ill on December 12, four days after the first known case. This suggests Covid-19 may have been spreading under the radar in several parts of Wuhan simultaneously before Huanan market amplified circulation. Experts said “following
the animals” would be crucial in the next stage of any investigation.
“We know how easily Sars-cov-2 spread from minks to mink farmers in Europe,” said Dr Dale Fisher, an expert in infectious diseases.
“So it’s likely the farmer was the index case who then took it to the market, where there was a superspreading event.”
Dr Holmes added: “In my mind, the wildlife trade is the most likely source of it. The role of that market is still uncertain, but there was clearly a lot of transmission and to me it smells like there’s a strong link – we need to follow it through.”
— Telegraph Group Ltd