The World Health Organisation rebuked Chinese officials for withholding research that may link COVID-19’s origin to wild animals, asking why the data had not been made available three years ago and why it is now missing.
Before the Chinese data disappeared, an international team of virus experts downloaded and began analysing the research, which appeared online in January. They say it supports the idea that the pandemic could have begun when illegally traded raccoon dogs infected humans at a Wuhan seafood market.
To some experts, that finding suggests that the animals may have been infected and may have transmitted the virus to humans.With huge amounts of genetic information drawn from swabs of animal cages, carts and other surfaces at the Wuhan market in early 2020, the genetic data had been the focus of restless anticipation among virus experts since they learned of it a year ago in a paper by Chinese scientists.
, thanks in part to a fresh intelligence assessment from the Department of Energy and hearings held by the new Republican House leadership. On Friday, she said lab leaks continued to pose enormous risks and that more oversight of research into dangerous pathogens was needed. But Cobey added that an accumulation of evidence — relating to the clustering of human cases around the Wuhan market, the genetic diversity of viruses there and now the raccoon dog data — strengthened the case for a market origin.The new genetic data does not appear to prove that a raccoon dog was infected with the coronavirus.
The Chinese study had suggested that samples that were positive for the virus had come from infected people, rather than from animals sold in the market. That fit with a narrative long promulgated by Chinese officials: that the virus sprang not only from outside the market but from outside the country altogether.iStock
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