After the US Department Of Energy’s intelligence assessment asserted of an ‘accidental laboratory leak’ from one of Wuhan’s Virology Laboratory, an international team of researchers have reported a new theory, according to which, the traces dating back to the outbreak of the pandemic came from racoon dogs that were sold at The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in China’s Wuhan province.
Traces of the SARS-CoV-2 virus were found in the genetic samples of raccoon dogs sold at one of the prominent seafood markets in central China’s Wuhan city. Experts are of the opinion that this evidence bolsters the issue of the COVID-19 pandemic’s origin.
This data was drawn from swabs that were collected from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in early January 2020 after which the market was shut down due to rising suspicion of outbreak by a new virus. This paved way for further research.
The swabs were taken taken from walls, cages, floors, metal cages and the carts that carried them. These swabs were then studied by an international team of researchers.
According to scientists, Samples that were reported to be positive, matched mostly with the genetic structure of raccoon dogs. This clearly indicated of them being related to a species of animals that featured fluffy skins and matched mostly with the physical features of foxes.
It is still not conclusively clear from the evidence whether it was a raccoon dog that was infected. There are still theories that suggest that the raccoon dog was infected from some other animal which could have already spread it among humans.
The analysis did firmly assert that fox like animals that are fluffy were able to propagate the coronavirus by leaving traces of themselves wherever they planted their genetic material. Tracing these, the researchers carried out studies and analysis which produced the first solid theory to the origin of the pandemic.
The evidence was found to be strong enough to confirm that the animal was a wild animal. It also offers one of the most solid and robust theories of the transmission of coronavirus from wild animals to humans. In comparison to other theories, this theory does offer a reasonable explanation on the topic.
The group of researchers consisted of a team of an evolutionary biologist, a virologist, and a biologist from University of Arizona, Scripps Research Institute in California Kristian Anderson and University Of Sydney respectively.
One of the many samples notoriously caught the attention of one of the researchers involved. They recall that the sample was taken from a cage in the Huanan Market which he had visited previously, contained raccoon dogs kept in conditions that were conducive for the spread of the virus.
According to one of them, they were able to discover it very early that the traces consisted of raccoon dog nucleic acid along with virus nucleic acid.
One of the researchers also cautioned that there were still not confirmed conclusively of raccoon dogs being the only infected animal.
The first case of COVID-19 was see in Wuhan province of China in December 2019. There have been more than 760,360,956 cases of COVID-19 with more than 6,873,477 fatalities.
The above study, in a nutshell, produced a logical theory that successfully confirmed of the related animal being a species that was, in someway, related to fluffy skinned and fox like wild animals. These animals were sold in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in the Wuhan Province of China. Swabs taken from walls, cages, floors, and other related surfaces produced shocking evidence related to the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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