Chinese data on animal market gives clues to origin of coronavirus: report

Data from the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, briefly uploaded to a global database by Chinese scientists, provide crucial information about the origins of the outbreak, including an animal market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, researchers said.

The virus was first identified in Wuhan in December 2019, with much suspicion that the Huanan live animal market was the source, before spreading across the world and killing nearly 7 million people.

The scientists published a preliminary report based on their interpretation of the data on Monday, following leaks in the press last week and a meeting with the World Health Organization (WHO), which asked China to release more information.

The data from China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention are no longer available on the Gisaid international database, where they were found by the scientists.

The information included new sequences of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and additional genomic data based on samples taken from a live animal market in Wuhan in 2020, according to the scientists who accessed it.

The sequences showed that raccoon dogs and other animals susceptible to the coronavirus were present in the market and may have been infected, providing a new clue in the chain of transmission that eventually reached humans, they said.

“This adds to the body of evidence identifying the Huanan market as the site of spread of SARS-CoV-2 and the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic,” the report said.

WHO officials said last week that the information is not conclusive but represents a new lead in the investigation into the origins of Covid-19 and should have been shared immediately.

The UN health agency has previously said that all hypotheses for the origins of the coronavirus remain on the table, including that the virus emerged from a high-security laboratory in Wuhan that studies dangerous pathogens.