Scientists Found New Chinese Data Hinting at the Origin of COVID-19. Then It Was Deleted

In another twist to the ongoing search for where COVID-19 originated, an international group of researchers stumbled upon new genetic material that had been posted on a public scientific database—and then abruptly deleted. As first reported in the Atlantic, in early March, Florence Debarre, an evolutionary biologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, was searching the public database GISAID, where scientists upload genetic sequences of pathogens they study. On the site, she found sequences from samples collected in Jan. 2020 from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, shortly after the market was closed because of concerns that the COVID-19 virus might have originated in animals sold there. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Debarre, along with researchers from the U.S. and Australia, studied the genetic sequences further and found that one could be traced to a cart from a stall that one of the scientists from the team remembered from a visit to the market back in 2014, according to the New York Times. At that time, raccoon dogs were kept on a cart in which their cages were placed on top of cages housing birds, a setup that infectious disease experts know can promote the spread of viruses from species to species. The sample taken from the cart in 2020 also contained SARS-CoV-2. In Feb. 2022, Chinese officials had issued summarizing results of swabs taken in 2020 from air, surfaces, and animals at the market, although all of th...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 healthscienceclimate Source Type: news