Status: 07/27/2022 1:49 p.m
New studies support the assumption that the starting point for the corona virus was an animal market in the Chinese metropolis of Wuhan. The thesis that the virus came from a Chinese laboratory is considered unlikely.
Two new studies come to the conclusion that the corona virus first broke out at an animal market in the Chinese metropolis of Wuhan – and did not come from a Chinese laboratory. The research showed “that it is simply not plausible that this virus was introduced to the Wuhan market in any way other than through the wildlife trade,” said one of the authors, University of Arizona virologist Michael Worobey.
Worobey’s study was published by the scientific journal “Science”. She evaluated available temporal and local data on the first known corona cases in Wuhan. The researchers found that the earliest cases of Covid-19 were concentrated in traders or people who bought or sold live animals at Huanan Market.
First cases appeared closely around Huanan market
The research team also looked at the first 155 corona infections in Wuhan. Accordingly, they were grouped closely around the Huanan market, while later infections were widely distributed in the metropolis. Therefore, the authors conclude that the virus originated in this market and spread from there. However, the researchers did not determine from which animal species the virus jumped to humans.
In the second study, also published in Science magazine, researchers examined the genetic data of early corona cases. They followed two lineages of the pathogen. Again, the scientists came to the conclusion that the virus probably jumped from animals in the Huanan market to humans.
China has so far rejected further WHO research
The corona pandemic first appeared in Wuhan at the end of 2019. It was soon speculated that the virus could have escaped in an accident at the institute of virology in Wuhan, where research on corona viruses is carried out. A team of experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) was only allowed to travel to China more than 12 months later and had returned without clear results.
The report presented by the WHO experts classified the so-called laboratory theory as “extremely unlikely”. However, there is a debate among scientists as to whether the virus could have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan.
Many countries have expressed concern that international experts have been denied access to important data in their investigation in China. The Chinese government has so far vehemently rejected further investigations, which WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has also called for.