We now have "the best evidence" we are ever likely to find of how the virus that causes Covid-19 was first transmitted to a human, a team of

Have we found the 'animal origin' of Covid?

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2023-03-25 08:00:06

We now have "the best evidence" we are ever likely to find of how the virus that causes Covid-19 was first transmitted to a human, a team of scientists has claimed.

It is the latest scientific twist in the troubled, highly politicised search for the cause of the worst pandemic in a century, one which has produced several competing theories which have neither been proved or disproved conclusively.

The most recent analysis points to a particular species as the likely animal origin of the virus. That analysis is based on evidence that was gathered three years ago from the Huanan Wildlife Market in Wuhan, which has always been a focal point of the initial outbreak.

During the early days of 2020, when Covid was still a mystery disease, the Chinese Centers for Disease Control (CDC) took samples from the market. The genetic information contained in those samples has only recently been made, briefly, public, and that enabled a team of researchers to decode them and point to racoon dogs as a possible "intermediate host" from which the disease spilled over into people.

The crux of this analysis is that DNA from racoon dogs, wild mammals that were being sold live in the market for meat, was found in the same locations as swabs from the market that tested positive for SARS CoV-2, according to an analysis that was published online on 20 March.