Two landmark studies investigating the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic have concluded there is overwhelming evidence the SARS-CoV-2 virus spilled over from animals into humans at a live animal market in Wuhan, China.
The studies refute theories the virus may have originated in a Chinese laboratory, which spread widely over the internet and has gained traction among some politicians. Two months later, Worobey — who is well recognized for investigating the origins of diseases like HIV and the 1918 Spanish flu — was among a handful of scientists who signed a letter calling for investigators to take “both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data.”
In order to find further cases radiating out from the market, the researchers layered social media “check-in” data from a Weibo channel created for people with COVID-19 to seek medical help. The density of the city and its connections with the world was the initial fuel that allowed the pandemic to burn for the past several years, added the Canadian researcher who used to work as a firefighter in B.C.
The first successful spillover event likely occurred around Nov. 18, 2019, while the second spillover likely occurred “within weeks of this even,” according to the study led by Jonathan Pekar of the Department of Biomedical Informatics at the University of California San Diego. “I was quite convinced of the lab leak myself,” said Andersen, “until we dove into this very carefully and looked at it much closer.”
Whether on a farm or in the wild, finding out what happened before the virus arrived at the market would also give investigators involved in virus surveillance a place to start looking, says Angela Rasmussen, another co-author and virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan.
Some of that data could still exist somewhere in China, said Worobey. But to access it will require international collaboration with Chinese scientists, something both Andersen and Rasmussen say has been severed in many cases due to political pressure. While not complete, the evidence the researchers got their hands on is among the best data sets of the early emergence of a global pandemic ever recorded.
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