Genetic material collected at a Chinese market near where the first human cases of COVID-19 were identified show raccoon dog DNA comingled with the virus, suggesting the pandemic may have originated from animals, not a lab, international experts say.
Other experts have not yet verified their analysis, which has yet to appear in a peer-reviewed journal. How the coronavirus began sickening people remains uncertain. The sequences will have to be matched to the genetic record of how the virus evolved to see which came first.
A French biologist spotted the information by chance and shared it with a group of scientists based outside China that's looking into the origins of the coronavirus. "The market environmental sampling data published by China CDC is by far the strongest evidence to support animal origins," Yip told the AP in an email. He was not connected to the new analysis.
Efforts to determine the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic have been complicated by factors including the massive surge of human infections in the pandemic's first two years and an increasingly bitter political dispute. Gao Fu, the former head of the Chinese CDC and lead author of the Chinese paper, didn't immediately respond to an Associated Press email requesting comment. But he told Science magazine the sequences are "nothing new. It had been known there was illegal animal dealing and this is why the market was immediately shut down."
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