Answering the question of whether the disease spilled over naturally from animals to humans, or was the result of a lab accident, is viewed as vital to averting the next pandemic and saving millions of lives.
Dr Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, who co-authored both papers, had previously called on the scientific community in a letter to be more open to the idea that the virus was the result of a lab leak. The first study's team used mapping tools to determine the location of most of the first 174 cases identified by the World Health Organisation, finding 155 of them were in Wuhan.- and some early patients with no recent history of visiting the market lived very close to it.
A public health worker seen at the Wuhan Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market on Jan 11, 2020. PHOTO: ST FILETwo lineages, A and B, marked the early pandemic. "Otherwise, lineage A would have had to have been evolving in slow motion compared to the lineage B virus, which just doesn't make biological sense," said Dr Worobey.