Covid origins: Genetic ghosts suggest pandemic started in market

A team of scientists say it is “beyond reasonable doubt” the Covid pandemic started with infected animals sold at a market, rather than a laboratory leak.The results identify a shortlist of animals – including racoon dogs, civets and bamboo rats – as potential sources of the pandemic.

The market was closed and teams swabbed locations including stalls, the inside of animal cages and equipment used to strip fur and feathers from slaughtered animals.Their analysisand the raw data made available to other scientists. Now a team in the US and France says they have performed even more advanced genetic analyses to peer deeper into Covid’s early days.

"We find a very consistent story in terms of this pointing - even at the level of a single stall - to the market as being the very likely origin of this particular pandemic," says Prof Kristian Andersen, from the Scripps Institute in the US.Getty Images The depth of the genetic analysis was able to identify the specific types of raccoon dogs being sold. They were those more commonly found in the wild in South China rather than those farmed for their fur. This gives scientists clues about where to look next.The research teams also analysed the genetic code of the viral samples found in the market, and compared them to samples from patients in the early days of the pandemic.

He said this study, combined with other data – such as early cases and hospitalisations being linked to the market – all pointed to an animal origin of Covid. The National Intelligence Council and four other agencies said animals were the likely source. The FBI and the Department of Energy thought it was more likely to be a laboratory incident.Prof Andersen said: "To many this seems like the most likely scenario - 'the lab is right there, of course it was the lab, are you stupid?'. I totally get that argument."

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Genetic tracing at the Huanan Seafood market further supports COVID animal originsA new international collaborative study provides a list of the wildlife species present at the market from which SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, most likely arose in late 2019. The study is based on a new analysis of metatranscriptomic data released by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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