Once more, strong evidence has surfaced to support the claims that the Covid-19 pandemic, which has so far claimed more than 6 million lives, originated in Wuhan‘s Huanan seafood and wildlife market.
The Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan was probably the coronavirus’s epicenter, according to two peer-reviewed studies that were published in the journal “Science.” The papers use different methodologies to reach the same conclusion.
The initial investigation reveals that the Wuhan market was the center of the early recorded cases.
While early COVID-19 instances appeared all around Wuhan, the bulk gathered in the city’s center near the Yangtze River’s west bank, with a large concentration of cases in and around the Huanan market, according to a study published in the journal Science and available online.
“The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early hub of the Covid-19 outbreak,” the study’s heading reads.
“The western half of the market, where animal species were also sold, was the location of all eight Covid-19 instances discovered prior to December 20. We discovered that Covid-19 cases were more widely dispersed throughout the building than SARS-CoV-2 positive environmental samples “The study in Science magazine continues.
The second study implies that two variations were introduced into people in late November or early December 2019 and uses genetic data to track the timeframe of the COVID outbreak.
The peer-reviewed study, “The molecular epidemiology of various zoonotic origins of SARS-CoV-2,” which was published in the journal Science and was quoted by media, uses a molecular technique to try and pinpoint when the first coronavirus infections spread from animals to people.
The first animal-to-human transfer likely occurred around November 18, 2019, and it originated from lineage B, according to the study. The lineage B type was only discovered by the researchers in individuals with a clear link to the Huanan market.
“These results specify the small gap between the time SARS-CoV-2 first infected humans and the time the first instances of COVID-19 were recorded, suggesting that it is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 disseminated widely in humans prior to November 2019. Like other coronaviruses, SARS-CoV-2 likely emerged as a result of several zoonotic incidents “Study findings
According to two investigations, there were two distinct “spillover occurrences,” where a human acquired the virus from an animal, that resulted in the virus being spread to others who were working or shopping there.
These two peer-reviewed papers were published a month after the World Health Organization (WHO) suggested that researchers keep looking into all potential causes of the Covid-19 outbreak, including lab leaks.
Professor Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research’s Department of Immunology and Microbiology said the investigations are very convincing but do not conclusively refute the lab leak theory.
Andersen was quoted in the media as saying, “I was very sure of the lab leak myself, until we delved into this very carefully and looked at it much closer.
I’ve persuaded myself that the data genuinely points to this specific market based on data and analysis I’ve conducted over the past ten years on numerous other infections.
