PARIS. The SarsCoV2 virus that caused the Covid-19 pandemic was probably circulating among animals in the Wuhan market in China already in the last months of 2019: it is indicated by a new analysis accomplished on the complete collection of all genetic sequences collected in the market immediately after the start of the pandemicwhich include Dna e Rna (the single-helix cousin) coming from viruses, bacteria, plants, animals and humansthat is, all the organisms present on site.
The study, published in the journal Cell and led by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), adds a another piece of the other evidence pointing the finger at infected animals as the point of origin of Covid-19, but it still leaves in the shadows the exact species ‘guilty’ of having favored the leap towards man: Among the most likely are raccoon dogs, small fox-like animals, and civets, small carnivorous mammals related to mongooses and hyenas..
“There has been a lot of misinformation about the origin of SarsCoV2,” says Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, one of the authors of the study coordinated by Florence Débarre.
“The reason it is so important to find out is that it concerns national security and public health.. And the truth is that, since the pandemic began more than four years ago,” Worobey adds, “not much has been done to reduce the possibility of a scenario like this repeating itself.”
On January 1, 2020, just hours after the Wuhan market closed, investigators from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention went there to collect samples from the floors, walls, and other surfaces of the stalls, as well as from cages and carts used to move animals, and from drains and sewers. The Chinese researchers then sequenced all the genetic material, publishing their results in Nature in 2023. The study, however, left unresolved the identity of the animal species that could have served as the intermediate host for the virus.
2024-09-23 10:02:53