Report authors say that the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 jumped to people from animals sold at the market on two occasions in late 2019 — but some scientists want more definitive evidence.
, the team zeroed in on the southwestern section of the Huanan market, where live animals were sold as recently as 2019, as being the potential epicentre of the outbreak. The researchers arrived at this conclusion by compiling information on the first known COVID-19 cases in China, as reported by various sources, including the WHO investigation, newspaper articles, and audio and video recordings of doctors and patients in Wuhan.
The authors also examined the locations of the positive samples collected in the market, as reported in the WHO study, and fleshed out information about the potential surroundings of these spots by collecting business registration information, photographs of the market before it closed and scientific reports that have emerged since the WHO’s investigation.
One major finding reported by Andersen and colleagues is the mapping of five positive samples from the market to a single stall that sold live animals, and, more specifically, to a metal cage, to carts used to move animals and to a machine used to remove birds’ feathers.
Taking all of the new data together, and adding a degree of speculation, Andersen suggests that raccoon dogs could have been infected on a farm that then sold the animals at the markets in Wuhan in November or December 2019, and that the virus might have jumped to people handling them or to buyers. On at least two occasions, those infections could have spread from an index case to other people, he says.
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