Wuhan market was epicentre of pandemic’s start, studies suggest

Abstract

cientists have released three studies that reveal intriguing new clues about how the COVID-19 pandemic started. Two of the reports trace the outbreak back to a massive market that sold live animals, among other goods, in Wuhan, China 1,2 , and a third 3 suggests that the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 spilled over from animalspossibly those sold at the market -to humans at least twice in November or December 2019. Posted on 25 and 26 February, all three are preprints, and so have not been published in a peer-reviewed journal.These analyses add weight to original suspicions that the pandemic began at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which many of the people who were infected earliest with SARS-CoV-2 had visited. The preprints contain genetic analyses of coronavirus samples collected from the market and from people infected in December 2019 and January 2020, as well as geolocation analyses connecting many of the samples to a section of the market where live animals were sold. Taken together, these lines of evidence point towards the market as the source of the outbreak -a situation akin to that seen in the epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002-04, for which animal markets were found to be ground zero -says Kristian Andersen, a virologist at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, and a co-author of two of the reports. "This is extremely strong evidence," he says.However, none of the studies contains definitive evidence about what type of animal might have harboured the virus before it spread to humans. Andersen speculates that the culprits could be raccoon dogs, squat dog-like mammals used for food and their fur in China. One of the studies he co-authored 2 suggests that raccoon dogs were sold in a section of the market where several positive samples were

Why the world has no universal biosafety standards

“…She says that says that although the scientific consensus seems to be that SARS-CoV-2 originated at a market in the city of Wuhan,9 earlier laboratory acquired coronavirus infections are a reminder that such infections do happen and “labs working with highly contagious and virulent pathogens have to be extraordinarily diligent and require competent third party oversight.”…”

Nature of viruses and pandemics: Coronaviruses

“…In fact, MERS-CoV prevalence in camels is very high, 80–99% depending on the country ( Omrani et al, 2015 ). SARS-CoV-2 has been most-likely transmitted to humans from racoons, as a virus with a 99.998% sequence identity to SARS-CoV-2 has been found in the feces present in the metal cages of the Huanan market at Wuhan ( Gao et al, 2022 ; Holmes et al, 2021 ; Maxmen, 2022 ; Pekar et al, 2022 ; Worobey et al, 2022 ).

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The synergy between two threats: disinformation and Covid-19

“…However, misinformation surrounding the Covid-19 has been a distinctive feature of this pandemic since its very beginning in Wuhan in late 2019. [10] For instance, in a sample of statements about the coronavirus rated false or misleading by fact-checkers between January and March 2020, it was found that 59% of misinformation was created by reconfiguring and recontextualizing information and 38% was entirely fabricated. [11] Here the term misinformation stands for inaccurate information that can can mislead and harm people, regardless of whether it results from an honest mistake, negligence, or intentional deception.…”