New evidence points to Chinese raccoon dogs as the origin of COVID

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Genetic sequence analysis of animal samples from the Wuhan market where the first cases of COVID-19 were detected has found SARS-CoV-2 in a raccoon dog, suggesting that it may have transmitted the virus to humans.

Three years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the exact origin of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has still not been determined, despite various theories that point to everything from bats to stray dogs to a possible leak in a laboratory. . But new scientific evidence suggests that an infected raccoon dog could have been the animal origin of the COVID that has killed millions of people.

An international team of scientists has reached this preliminary conclusion after analyzing genetic sequences from the Wuhan market and, although it is not definitive proof and needs to be reviewed by other scientists, it is the strongest evidence on the animal origin of the pandemic that has been found so far and once again points out as the most probable cause that there was a transmission of the coronavirus to humans through infected animals, instead of an accidental leak of the virus from a laboratory in Wuhan, as he proposed three weeks ago the latest report from the United States.

The new report has been carried out by a team made up of virologists, genomics experts and evolutionary biologists who have analyzed genetic sequences of samples taken from animals from the market in this Chinese city and have identified SARS-CoV-2 in a tanuki, a dog raccoon or Japanese raccoon that was sold illegally at the end of 2019. The virologist Angela Rasmussen who has participated in this investigation has affirmed in statements to The Atlantic that “this is a solid indication that the animals in the market were infected. There is no other explanation that makes sense.”

It is the first time that this genetic material has been made available to scientists outside of China, thanks to researchers from the Chinese CDC sharing the data on the GISAID open web, and although the information has subsequently been withdrawn, several international groups had already accessed it. them and had downloaded them. The Chinese researchers presented their results in February 2022, but at the time they thought that animals that had tested positive for the virus could have been infected by humans.

SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus family tree

The results of the new research – which have not yet been published in any scientific journal, although they were presented to the WHO on March 14 – reveal that several samples positive for SARS-CoV-2 are associated with a history of animal genetic material. . Researchers, including Edward Holmes, who is one of the experts who has played a key role in the fight against COVID, have designed a family tree of the coronavirus whose most probable origin goes back to the raccoon dog, a mammal that it is bred for sale in China and that it would have the capacity to infect people with this type of virus.

The findings do not constitute conclusive proof that the origin of the pandemic lies in the transmission of the virus to humans through this animal, since the route of transmission could have been another animal, and even a person infected with SARS- CoV-2 could have passed the virus to the raccoon dog.

However, as reported by The New York Times, the analysis has determined that the raccoons have deposited genetic signatures in the same place where the genetic material of the virus was left: a scenario in which the virus was transmitted to humans by an animal. wild because many of the first cases of COVID were detected by workers, customers or people residing near the Wuhan market.

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