Raccoon dogs in Wuhan market may have spread Covid to humans
‘What we are seeing is the genomic ghost of [raccoon dogs] in the stalls. It’s close to best evidence we can get’
RACCOON dogs in Wuhan’s wet market may have been the final step in Covid-19’s jump from animals to humans, according to data collected in the crucial early months of 2020.
Although the research cannot definitively prove that the animals were infected with coronavirus, the fact that their DNA was found in animal cage swabs taken just after authorities shut down Huanan seafood wholesale market is an “important clue” as to how the pandemic began, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said yesterday.
It also shows that China is sitting on more data than it has previously released or shared internationally.
The research by an international team of experts was only made possible after Chinese researchers quietly posted 600 gigabytes of data on GISAID, a database of genetic sequences.
The original swabs taken from walls, floors, metal cages and carts in the market – which was linked to the first known Covid-19 cases – has provided the first opportunity for scientists outside of China to study how the virus jumped from animals to humans.
The results have not yet been published, and The Daily Telegraph has not seen the analysis. But researchers involved said that, in positive samples for Sars-cov-2, they found genetic material belonging to animals – including significant amounts that came from raccoon dogs.
The raccoon dog DNA discovery is not a “smoking gun”, researchers say, but it provides the “strongest evidence” yet that animals susceptible to Sarscov-2 were traded at the site in late 2019 and may have acted as the “intermediate host”, which passed the virus from bats to humans.
This does not prove that these animals – which are intensively farmed in China – were infected.
But it demonstrates that wildlife was definitely being illegally sold at Huanan market, something China has denied, and shows raccoon dogs deposited genetic material in the same areas where Sars-cov-2 was found.
Dr Florence Débarre, an evolutionary biologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, said: “What we are seeing is the genomic ghost of that animal in the stalls. It’s close to the best [evidence] we can get, because the animals were gone when they came to sample the markets.”
Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO’S emerging diseases unit, said yesterday the “very detailed” data provides “important clues”, as it is the first “molecular evidence” that raccoon dogs and other animals susceptible to Sarscov-2 were at the market.
“But it “doesn’t give us the answer of how the pandemic began”.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of WHO, has called for “every piece of data” to be shared with the international community immediately.