New COVID origin data points to raccoon dogs in Chinese market

Efforts to determine the origin of COVID have been complicated by factors such as a massive surge in human infections and acrimonious international political wrangling.

LONDON, UK — Genetic material collected from a Chinese market near where the first human cases of COVID-19 were identified shows that raccoon dog DNA mixed with the virus, suggesting the pandemic may have originated from animals rather than laboratories, international experts say.

Other experts have yet to validate their analysis, which has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal. How the coronavirus began to infect humans remains unclear. The sequences must be matched against the genetic record of the evolution of the virus to see which came first.

“These data do not definitively answer the question of how the pandemic began, but every piece of data is important in getting us closer to that answer,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday.

He criticized China for not previously sharing genetic information, saying in a press briefing that “this data could and should have been shared three years ago.”

The samples were taken from surfaces at the Huanan Seafood Market in early 2020 in Wuhan, where the first human cases of COVID-19 were detected in late 2019.

Tedros said the genetic sequences were recently uploaded to the world’s largest public database of viruses by scientists at the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

They were then removed, but not before a French biologist accidentally discovered the information and shared it with a group of scientists based outside of China who are studying the origins of the coronavirus.

The data shows that some of the COVID-positive samples taken from a stall known to deal in the wildlife trade also contained raccoon dog genes, which scientists believe indicates the animals may have been infected with the virus. Their analysis was first reported in The Atlantic.

“There is a strong possibility that the animals that deposited this DNA also deposited the virus,” said Steven Goldstein, a virologist at the University of Utah who was involved in the data analysis. zoonotic distribution… that’s basically exactly what you’d expect to find.”

Ray Yip, an epidemiologist and founding member of the US Center for Disease Control in China, said the results are significant, though not conclusive.

“The environmental market sample data released by the China CDC is by far the strongest evidence in support of animal origin,” Yip told AP in an email. He was not connected to the new analysis.

WHO COVID-19 technical lead Maria Van Kerkhove warned that the analysis did not find the virus in any of the animals, nor did it find conclusive evidence that any animals had infected humans.

“It provides clues to help us understand what might have happened,” she said. The international team also told the WHO they found DNA from other animals, as well as raccoon dogs, in samples from the seafood market, she added.

“There is molecular evidence that the animals were sold at the Huanan market, and this is new information,” Van Kerkhove said.

Efforts to determine the causes of the COVID-19 pandemic are complicated by factors such as a massive surge in human infections in the first two years of the pandemic and increasingly acrimonious political disputes.

It has taken virus experts more than a decade to pinpoint the animal origin of the related SARS virus.

Goldstein and colleagues say their analysis is the first strong indication that there may have been coronavirus-infected wild animals on the market. But it’s also possible that people brought the virus to the market and infected raccoon dogs, or that infected people just accidentally left traces of the virus around the animals.

After scientists from the group contacted the Chinese CDC, the sequences were removed from the global virus database, they said. Researchers wonder why data on samples collected more than three years ago were not made public earlier. Tedros has asked China to provide more data on COVID-19 research.

Gao Fu, a former head of the Chinese CDC and a leading contributor to a Chinese newspaper, did not immediately respond to an Associated Press email asking for comment. But he told Science magazine that the sequences “are nothing new. It was known about the illegal trade in animals, so the market was immediately closed.

Goldstein said his group presented its findings this week to a WHO advisory group tasked with investigating the origins of COVID-19.

Mark Woolhouse, an infectious disease expert at the University of Edinburgh, said it was critical to see how the genetic sequences of raccoon dogs match what is known about the historical evolution of the COVID-19 virus. If dogs are shown to have COVID and these viruses are found to be of an earlier origin than those that have infected humans, “this is probably good evidence that this was a by-product on the market.”

After a week-long visit to China to study the origin of the pandemic in 2021, the WHO released a report concluding that COVID-19 most likely entered the human body from animals and dismissed the possibility of laboratory origin as “highly unlikely”.

But the following year, the UN health agency backed down, saying “key data” was still missing. And Tedros said that all hypotheses remain on the table.

China’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists, who had previously analyzed samples from the Huanan market, published a paper in February as a preprint suggesting humans brought the virus to the market, not animals, implying the virus originated elsewhere. Their article does not mention that animal genes were found in the samples that tested positive.

Wuhan, the Chinese city where COVID-19 was first discovered, is home to several laboratories collecting and studying coronaviruses, fueling theories that the virus may have leaked from one of them.

In February, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Department of Energy assessed the virus leak from the lab with “low confidence.” But others in the US intelligence community disagree, believing it most likely came from animals. Experts say the true origin of the pandemic may be unknown for years – if ever.

Cheng reported from London.

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