The World Health Organization has obtained data pointing to the presence of raccoon canines—a species suspected by a few of initially spreading COVID-19 to people—on the Wuhan market tied to the virus’s early days, officers stated Friday.
Raccoon canines—identified to be vulnerable to COVID-19, and to unfold viruses to people—are thought to have been bought illegally on the market. They could possibly be the lacking hyperlink within the chain of transmission from bats, presumably, to individuals, consultants within the zoonotic transmission camp say.
But WHO officers Friday cautioned in opposition to assumptions, saying that whereas the knowledge is a crucial piece of the proverbial jigsaw puzzle, “it does not determine what the picture shows”—and {that a} lab leak can’t be dominated out.
“The more pieces you have in the right place, the more you start to see an image,” Dr. Michael Ryan, the group’s government director of well being emergencies, stated at a information convention, referencing the puzzle analogy.
“You’re never really sure what you’re building until you put a piece in the context of all the other pieces,” he stated. But “your level of confidence grows as you put it together.”
No definitive reply
The WHO on Sunday was made conscious of knowledge from samples taken on the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan in the course of the early days of the pandemic, earlier than the market was shut down. That knowledge been printed to GISAID—a world analysis database that tracks adjustments in COVID and the flu virus—by officers with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in late January, however was not too long ago taken down, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu, WHO director normal, stated on the information convention.
The data triggered a Tuesday assembly of WHO’s Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens, which is investigating the virus’s origins. At the assembly, worldwide scientists who had obtained the information earlier than it was eliminated and analyzed it introduced their findings. Chinese CDC officers additionally introduced, on the WHO’s request.
The new data offers no definitive solutions as to the pandemic’s origins, Ghebreyesu cautioned. “But every piece of data is important in moving us closer to that answer.”
All knowledge associated to learning the novel virus’s origins “needs to be shared with the international community,” he stated. “The data could have—and should have—been shared three years ago.”
The knowledge exhibits solely that raccoon canines had been current on the market, along with different animals and the virus, Maria Van Verkohove, technical lead for COVID-19 on the WHO, stated.
While it’s the primary little bit of molecular proof that animals had been illegally bought on the moist market, it’s not proof that such animals—or any animals—had been contaminated, she stated. Had they been, it wouldn’t essentially imply they introduced the virus to the market. They might have been contaminated by people, on the market or elsewhere.
“It just tells us that more data exists, and that data needs to be shared in full,” she stated.
A February 2022 preprint article, not peer reviewed, printed by the Chinese Academy of Science’s George Gao, the previous head of the nation’s CDC, and a litany of different researchers from the nation particulars 1,380 samples collected from the atmosphere and animals on the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan in early 2020.
A complete of 73 environmental samples had been constructive for COVID-19. The virus was not detected within the 18 animal swabs collected there, in accordance with the report.
A ‘smoking gun’
Dr. Georges Benjamin, government director of the American Public Health Association, advised Fortune that the brand new data is “strong evidence” supporting the idea of transmission of the virus from animals to individuals.
Proof that “raccoon dogs, a known transmitter of viruses to humans, were in an illegal wet market is a smoking gun,” Benjamin stated.
Dr. Raj Rajnarayanan, assistant dean of analysis and affiliate professor on the New York Institute of Technology campus in Jonesboro, Ark., referred to as the report “a key piece of the puzzle,” including that it’ll permit virus trackers the power to “establish a timeline” of evolution.
While the brand new data doesn’t clear up the puzzle, it offers important hope that the puzzle can, certainly, be solved, Benjamin stated. “It will take some painstaking research and science to do it. But now we have a pathway to figure it out.”
Not everybody, nevertheless, agrees on the knowledge’s utility—at the least not but. Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious illness specialist and senior scholar on the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, advised Fortune that the scientific group at giant nonetheless doesn’t have entry to the information not too long ago pulled from the worldwide analysis database by Chinese officers.
Thus, there isn’t “enough information to be able to really say anything useful” in regards to the report of raccoon canine DNA on the market, Adalja stated. “No evidence has actually been presented as of yet.”
If the information is, certainly, scientifically legitimate, “it would lend support to the consensus view that COVID-19 likely spilled over from an animal into a human without there being any lab accidents or intentional release,” Dr. Jay Varma, chief medical adviser on the New York-based assume tank Kroll Institute, advised Fortune.
But it’s doable that raccoon canines are nothing however a crimson herring, relating to figuring out the origins of COVID, Varma cautions.
There have been anecdotal experiences of “COVID or COVID-like illness” not tied to the market occurring way back to November 2019—earlier than the market’s super-spreading occasions in December.
Those circumstances might sign that COVID-19 didn’t spill into people from the market—or that such spill-over wasn’t chargeable for the primary human circumstances of COVID.
Varma spent three years in China with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, engaged on the problem of respiratory virus circulation in central China. He says he’s all the time thought there have been a number of spill-overs from animals to people within the area between October and December 2019.
An outbreak occurred on the market, he stated. But it could not have began there.
Spillovers might have occurred “someone else in and around Wuhan,” he stated.
