Knowledge collected in 2020—and saved from public view since then—doubtlessly provides weight to the animal idea. It highlights a possible suspect: the raccoon canine. However precisely how a lot weight it provides depends upon who you ask. New analyses of the information have solely reignited the controversy, and stirred up some critical drama.
The present ruckus begins with a research shared by Chinese language scientists again in February 2022. In a preprint (a scientific paper that has not but been peer-reviewed or revealed in a journal), George Gao of the Chinese language Heart for Illness Management and Prevention (CCDC) and his colleagues described how they collected and analyzed 1,380 samples from the Huanan Seafood Market.
These samples have been collected between January and March 2020, simply after the market was closed. On the time, the group wrote that they solely discovered coronavirus in samples alongside genetic materials from individuals.
There have been loads of animals on sale at this market, which offered extra than simply seafood. The Gao paper includes a lengthy listing, together with chickens, geese, geese, pheasants, doves, deer, badgers, rabbits, bamboo rats, porcupines, hedgehogs, crocodiles, snakes, and salamanders. And that listing is just not exhaustive—there are experiences of different animals being traded there, together with raccoon canine. We’ll come again to them later.
However Gao and his colleagues reported that they didn’t discover the coronavirus in any of the 18 species of animal they checked out. They steered that it was people who most certainly introduced the virus to the market, which ended up being the primary identified epicenter of the outbreak.
Quick-forward to March 2023. On March 4, Florence Débarre, an evolutionary biologist at Sorbonne College in Paris, noticed some knowledge that had been uploaded to GISAID, a web site that permits researchers to share genetic knowledge to assist them research and observe viruses that trigger infectious ailments. The info appeared to have been uploaded in June 2022. It appeared to have been collected by Gao and his colleagues for his or her February 2022 research, though it had not been included within the precise paper.
