Genetic data collected from a live seafood market in Wuhan, Central China, further supports the hypothesis that Covid-19 originated from this market.
The Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan could be the origin of Covid-19. (Photo: AP).
Samples collected from the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan during the two months following its closure on January 1, 2020, contained both the Sars-CoV-2 virus and human DNA. In a report published last year, Chinese scientists claimed that these samples did not contain animal DNA.
However, recent analysis by an international team of scientists from the French National Centre for Scientific Research and the University of Arizona revealed that the samples from the Huanan market that tested positive for Covid-19 contained a significant amount of DNA from raccoon dogs, as reported by The Guardian on March 17.
Additionally, some samples that tested positive for Covid-19 also contained DNA from other animals such as civets.
The new research findings have been shared with the World Health Organization (WHO).
This discovery does not necessarily mean that raccoon dogs or other infected animals were the starting point of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, scientists believe that this finding reinforces the hypothesis that the Huanan market was the site of the Covid-19 outbreak.
“The data continues to indicate that the market is the source of the outbreak,” said Professor Kristian Andersen, an evolutionary biologist at the Scripps Research Institute.
Scientists indicate that the data on raccoon dogs infected with the Sars-CoV-2 virus shows that infected domesticated animals were a crucial link in the chain of events leading to the Covid-19 outbreak.
