COVID pandemic started in Wuhan market animals after all, suggests latest study
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Some of the earliest cases of COVID-19 were linked to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China. Credit: Hector Retamal/AFP Via Getty
The hunt for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic has new leads. Researchers have identified half a dozen animal species that could have passed SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, to people, by reanalysing genomes collected from an animal market in Wuhan, China1. The study establishes the presence of animals and the virus at the market, although it does not confirm whether the animals themselves were infected with the virus.
Many of the earliest cases of COVID-19 were linked to the city’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, and so it became a focus in the search for the pandemic’s origin. The study, published in Cell today, is the latest in a series of analyses of the market samples. The researchers argue that their reanalysis adds more weight to the market being the site of the first spillover events, in which animals with the virus infected people, sparking the pandemic. This expands on a preliminary analysis on a subset of the China CDC data, which the same team published in March 2023.
However, the team’s conclusion differs from the first peer-reviewed analysis of the data, published in Nature2 in April last year, in which a separate team also identified several animals and the virus but concluded the role of the market in the pandemic’s origin was unclear.
