An international team of scientists published a peer-reviewed paper Thursday saying genetic evidence indicates the coronavirus pandemic most likely originated with a natural spillover from an animal or animals sold in a market in Wuhan, China, where many of the first human cases of covid were identified.
The paper, which appears in the journal Cell, does not claim to prove conclusively that the pandemic began in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, and it is unlikely to end the acrimonious and politicized debate over the coronavirus’s origin.
For more than four years, researchers, intelligence agencies, journalists and amateur sleuths have tussled over the two main scenarios for the pandemic’s origin: a natural spillover from animals or some kind of leak from a laboratory experimenting on coronaviruses.
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The new report bolsters the natural spillover theory, but it does not rule out other origins. A key limitation of the research is that the genetic data, obtained by Chinese investigators in the early days of the pandemic after the market was closed, cannot reveal whether any animal was actually infected with the virus.
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“The results we see are consistent with infected animals, but we cannot prove that they were,” said Florence Débarre, an evolutionary biologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research and a co-author of the new paper.
Much of the report is familiar territory. Many of the 23 authors of the paper are known to have long supported a market origin for the virus. In an informal report in March 2023, they presented a central feature of the genetic data — the confirmation that animals potentially capable of triggering a pandemic were in the market.
That early report, which was not peer reviewed or published in a journal, had a scientifically awkward provenance. It was written over the course of about 10 days, Débarre said, after she noticed that Chinese researchers had posted some of their genetic data from the market on GISAID, a public database regularly scanned by pandemic researchers.
The Chinese researchers had submitted a report to the journal Nature, and, after peer review, it was published in April 2023. The Nature paper from the Chinese scientists describes the genetic data as inconclusive about the origin of the pandemic, including that there is no proof any animals were infected with the virus.
“Furthermore, even if the animals were infected, our study does not rule out human-to-animal transmission, as the sampling was carried out after the human infection within the market,” the Nature paper states. “Thus, the possibility of potential introduction of the virus to the market through infected humans, or cold-chain products, cannot yet be ruled out.”
The paper, which appears in the journal Cell, does not claim to prove conclusively that the pandemic began in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, and it is unlikely to end the acrimonious and politicized debate over the coronavirus’s origin.
For more than four years, researchers, intelligence agencies, journalists and amateur sleuths have tussled over the two main scenarios for the pandemic’s origin: a natural spillover from animals or some kind of leak from a laboratory experimenting on coronaviruses.
ADVERTISING
The new report bolsters the natural spillover theory, but it does not rule out other origins. A key limitation of the research is that the genetic data, obtained by Chinese investigators in the early days of the pandemic after the market was closed, cannot reveal whether any animal was actually infected with the virus.
🧘
Follow Health & wellness
“The results we see are consistent with infected animals, but we cannot prove that they were,” said Florence Débarre, an evolutionary biologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research and a co-author of the new paper.
Much of the report is familiar territory. Many of the 23 authors of the paper are known to have long supported a market origin for the virus. In an informal report in March 2023, they presented a central feature of the genetic data — the confirmation that animals potentially capable of triggering a pandemic were in the market.
That early report, which was not peer reviewed or published in a journal, had a scientifically awkward provenance. It was written over the course of about 10 days, Débarre said, after she noticed that Chinese researchers had posted some of their genetic data from the market on GISAID, a public database regularly scanned by pandemic researchers.
The Chinese researchers had submitted a report to the journal Nature, and, after peer review, it was published in April 2023. The Nature paper from the Chinese scientists describes the genetic data as inconclusive about the origin of the pandemic, including that there is no proof any animals were infected with the virus.
“Furthermore, even if the animals were infected, our study does not rule out human-to-animal transmission, as the sampling was carried out after the human infection within the market,” the Nature paper states. “Thus, the possibility of potential introduction of the virus to the market through infected humans, or cold-chain products, cannot yet be ruled out.”
