New data revives first theory on the origin of the pandemic

(News)
– One of 18 scientists to sign May letter advancing idea novel coronavirus may have leaked from Wuhan Institute of Virology says new evidence points in another direction: wholesale fruit market of Huanan Sea. “I think transmission from another species, without lab escape, is the most likely scenario by far,” University of Arizona evolutionary biologist Michael Worobey told NPR. “The data is very consistent with this from the market.” A March report from the World Health Organization was inconclusive as to whether the outbreak had started in the market, although it suggested transmission from bats to humans via of another animal. Worobey, co-author of a new online journal that used computer models to show how SARS-CoV-2 spread in Wuhan, China, says this report did not examine the location of the first known cases of COVID-19 compared to the market.

Since signing the letter, Worobey has worked with microbiologist Robert Garry of Tulane University to map the location of the people whose first cases were confirmed in Wuhan. The Wuhan Institute of Virology is outside the original cluster of cases. But the seafood market, more than 10 miles away, “seems to be on target,” Worobey says. “It’s quite extraordinary.” Additionally, a recent study found the market to be one of four in Wuhan selling illegal wildlife, including palm civets and raccoon dogs, “which are the likely suspects as SARS-CoV intermediaries. -2 “, explains Worobey. Civets are believed to have caused the SARS-CoV pandemic in 2003, per NPR. This new research comes as WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus calls on China to release early “raw data” and allow better access to its laboratories so scientists can better understand the origin of SARS -CoV-2, by Science. (Wuhan’s only foreign virologist thinks the lab leak theory is unlikely.)