A team of scientists say it is "beyond reasonable doubt" the Covid pandemic started with infected animals.

A team of scientists say it is “beyond reasonable doubt” the Covid pandemic started with infected animals sold at a market, rather than a laboratory leak.

They were analysing hundreds of samples collected from Wuhan, China, in January 2020.

The results identify a shortlist of animals – including racoon dogs, civets and bamboo rats – as potential sources of the pandemic.

Despite even highlighting one market stall as a hotspot of both animals and coronavirus, the study cannot provide definitive proof.

The samples were collected by Chinese officials in the early stages of Covid and are one of the most scientifically valuable sources of information on the origins of the pandemic.

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Their analysis was published last year and the raw data made available to other scientists. Now a team in the US and France says they have performed even more advanced genetic analyses to peer deeper into Covid’s early days.

  • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
    41·
    57 minutes ago

    Note, this evidence doesn’t rule out the preliminary scenario of a scientist from the bioLab visiting the wet market and infecting/contaminating some of the animal’s there.

    our study does not rule out human-to-animal transmission, as the sampling was carried out after the human infection within the market. Thus, the possibility of potential introduction of the virus to the market through infected humans, or cold-chain products, cannot yet be ruled out.