Coronavirus Pandemic Origin Still Points to Animals Sold in Wuhan Wet Market, Latest Study States

COVID-19 pandemic started in Wuhan, China, according to new studies released last week. The speculation began in 2019 when the first few cases of the coronavirus were detected in the region's popular wet market that serves various types of exotic foods.

The data from each of these latest scientific papers were based on the statistics collected from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. The authors of the studies concluded that the virus came from animals and was transmitted to humans who visited the wet market in 2019.

On the other hand, the teams presented no evidence to the theory that the virus came in a Wuhan-based laboratory.

New Studies Point Huanan Seafood Market as Origin of Pandemic

Members of staff of the Wuhan Hygiene Emergency Response Team drive their vehicle as they leave the closed Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in the city of Wuhan, in Hubei, Province on January 11, 2020, where the Wuhan health commission said that the man who died from a respiratory illness had purchased goods. - China said on January 11, 2020 that a 61-year-old man had become the first person to die from a respiratory illness believed to be caused by a new virus from the same family as SARS (Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome), which claimed hundreds of lives more than a decade ago. Forty-one people with pneumonia-like symptoms have so far been diagnosed with the new virus in Wuhan, with one of the victims dying on January 8, 2020, the central Chinese city's health commission said on its website. NOEL CELIS/AFP via Getty Images

University of Arizona's evolutionary biologist and co-author of two recent studies, Michael Worobey, said in The New York Times report that the collection of evidence they gathered presents a great picture that the Huanan wet market is indeed the starting point of the pandemic.

Two of the studies that Worobey took part in are not yet peer-reviewed and published in a scientific journal. However, the findings are already available for viewing at Zenodo, an open-access research portal under the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN).

Spatial analysis was presented in one of the studies, titled "The Huanan market was the epicenter of SARS-CoV-2 emergence," released last Saturday. In this investigation, the earliest COVID-19 cases diagnosed in December 2019 are associated with the Wuhan wet market.

In addition, the recovered environmental samples that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 were linked with the market's animal vendors.

A separate study, titled "SARS-CoV-2 emergence very likely resulted from at least two zoonotic events," revealed that the coronavirus has two major lineages that originated from two cases of animal-to-human transmission.

The investigation points out that the first transmission occurred between late November and early December 2019. The second virus lineage followed a few weeks of the same year.

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Major Coronavirus Lineage Associated with Wuhan Market Animals

Authors from both of these studies were behind a previous paper published in the journal Cell last summer, titled "The origins of SARS-CoV-2: A critical review." The initial examination implied that the COVID-19 pandemic started infecting animals that are likely at a wildlife market.

Many experts already eyed the Huanan market as the epicenter of the pandemic during the release of this paper.

Worobey said that the latest information gives the 'strongest evidence' yet regarding the animal-related origins of the coronavirus.

In another study, experts from China analyzed a batch of samples collected in January. These samples were discovered to contain the same couple of coronavirus lineages identified by the other investigations. The findings, published last Friday, are available in the journal In Review | Nature Portfolio, titled "Surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in the environment and animal samples of the Huanan Seafood Market."

According to Worobey, the 'overwhelming majority' of the COVID-19 cases were linked in the Huanan market's western section. In this area, live mammal stores are located. The place was associated with a number of early transmissions in the community until the pattern of spread changed in the first quarter of 2020, Worobey told CNN.