New research: Two studies reinforce Covid-19’s Wuhan market origin | Explained News,The Indian Express

The two studies confirm the initial understanding of the beginnings of the Covid-19 pandemic, which, however, became controversial in the months after the outbreak.

Two companion papers published in Science magazine on July 26 indicate that the Covid-19 pandemic “most likely began with at least two separate zoonotic transmissions starting in November 2019”, and that SARS-CoV-2 emerged via the live wildlife trade in China, with the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan being the likely early epicentre of the pandemic.

The two studies — which were first released online on February 26 this year but were since awaiting peer review — confirm the initial understanding of the beginnings of the pandemic, which, however, became controversial in the months after the outbreak.

The lead authors of both studies are affiliated to American universities — the University of Arizona and the University of California San Diego — and the research has been primarily funded by the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH). One of the papers also received funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the US national public health agency.

The paper titled ‘The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic’ (Worobey et al.), mapped geo locations of 155 of the initial 174 cases, and found that that the clustering in December around the Huanan market contrasts with the pattern of widely dispersed cases across Wuhan by early January through mid-February 2020 — indicating that the cases flowed outward from the market to elsewhere.

The second paper, ‘The molecular epidemiology of multiple zoonotic origins of SARS-CoV-2’ (Pekar et al.), through simulations of SARS-CoV-2-like epidemics combined with genomic sequence data, concludes that “as with other coronaviruses, SARS-CoV-2’s emergence likely resulted from multiple zoonotic events” (the spread of germs from animals to humans).

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-new-studies-reinforce-covids-wuhan-market-origin-8055762/


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