In a new study on the origin of the corona virus, a group of eighteen western scientists are convinced that Sars-Cov2 spread to humans for the first time in November 2019 at the wholesale market in Wuhan, which was considered the place of origin at the beginning of the pandemic.

The researchers, led by the Canadian evolutionary biologist Michael Worobey, came to this conclusion through a combination of different analysis methods.

Friederike Böge

Political correspondent for China, North Korea and Mongolia.

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Among other things, they document the homes of 156 of the earliest known corona cases, many of which are in the immediate vicinity of the Huanan market in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

This also includes people who had not visited the market either as customers or as sellers.

The World Health Organization (WHO) mission, which visited Wuhan in January and February 2021, did not conduct such a spatial survey.

WHO: Laboratory accident not sufficiently investigated

In addition, the study, published as a preprint over the weekend, shows a correlation between the positive environmental samples taken at the market in January 2020 and stalls where live animals were illegally traded.

According to the researchers, raccoon dogs and other mammals that can act as intermediate hosts for coronaviruses were sold alive there.

The report, which the WHO delegation presented together with Chinese researchers, said there was no evidence of illegal trade.

The Chinese authorities had announced that all animal samples were negative.

However, the authors of the most recent study write that, according to the disease control agency, no samples were taken from the illegally sold animals.

The animals were disposed of under unknown circumstances.

In this study, too, no host animal was identified from which the virus jumped to humans.

The question of origin thus remains open.

As a further lead to the Huanan market, the researchers evaluated the genomic data of the early corona cases.

Thus, both known lineages of the virus, called A and B, have links to the market.

This finding is new and based on information from China's disease control agency that was not published until recently.

So far, only lineage A had been traced back to the Huanan market.

The authors conclude that there could have been two jumps from one or more animals to humans on the market.

The WHO maintains that the possibility of a laboratory accident as the origin of the pandemic has not yet been sufficiently researched.

However, the People's Republic of China shows no willingness to allow another mission.

Canadian Worobey, who led the latest study, was among the signatories to an open letter in Science last year calling for further investigation into the possibility of a laboratory accident.

The authors also include microbiologist Kristian Andersen, who wrote in an email to US Presidential Health Advisor Anthony Fauci in January 2020 that some characteristics of the virus could indicate that it was created in the laboratory.

However, he later presented an analysis that ruled this out and steered the debate towards a natural origin early on.

Unlike the authors of the current study, who pinpoint the Huanan market as the origin of the pandemic, the WHO delegation at the time stated that the role of the market had not been finally clarified and may only have been the site of a superspreader event.