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. They were analysing hundreds of samples collected from Wuhan, China, in January 2020. The results identify a shortlist of animals – including racoon dogs, civets and bamboo rats – as potential sources of the pandemic.
Despite even highlighting one market stall as a hotspot of both animals and coronavirus, the study cannot provide definitive proof. The samples were collected by Chinese officials in the early stages of Covid and are one of the most scientifically valuable sources of information on the origins of the pandemic. An early link with the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was established when patients appeared in hospitals in Wuhan with a mystery pneumonia.
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 analysis was published last year and 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.
It involved analysing millions of short fragments of genetic code – both DNA and RNA – to establish what animals and viruses were in the market in January 2020. "We are seeing the DNA and RNA ghosts of these animals in the environmental samples, and some are in stalls.