Coronavirus origin: scientist says there is ‘strong evidence’ pointing to Wuhan market
- Evolutionary biologist’s analysis of the earliest cases of Covid-19 in China suggests the first known patient was a seafood vendor
- He says the data indicates that early patients were specifically connected to a section of the market selling raccoon dogs
Michael Worobey, head of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, relied on a close analysis of cases flagged by hospitals and reported in medical journals, alongside media reports, to argue that early links to the market were not just the result of a reporting bias.
Instead, they showed most early symptomatic cases from December 2019 were linked to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, according to his article published in the journal Science on Thursday.
Worobey said the data indicated that those early cases were specifically connected to a section selling raccoon dogs in cages – an animal known to carry related coronaviruses.
This “provides strong evidence of a live-animal market origin of the pandemic”, he said. “Although it may never be possible to recover related viruses from animals if they were not sampled at the time of emergence, conclusive evidence of a Huanan market origin from infected wildlife may nonetheless be obtainable through analysis of spatial patterns of early cases and from additional genomic data.”
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