Daily Mail
Fierce debates about the origins of the Covid pandemic were reignited today after two new studies claimed to trace the outbreak back to a notorious animal slaughter market in Wuhan.
One shows for the first time how the earliest human cases were clustered within a small radius around the Huanan Seafood Market in winter 2019.
More precise analysis of swabs taken from floors, cages and counters track the virus back to stalls in the southwestern corner of the market, where animals that can harbour Covid were sold for meat or fur at the time.
A second study claims to have pinpointed the exact date the first animal-to-human infection occurred — November 18, 2019 — after carrying out genetic analysis on hundreds of samples from the first human carriers.
They also say they have found evidence another first generation strain was spreading at the wet market — which, if true, would place both original lineages within its walls.
Until recently, the only Covid cases linked to the market were Lineage B, which was thought to have evolved after Lineage A. Proponents of the accidental lab leak hypothesis used this as proof the virus only arrived at the market after evolving elsewhere in Wuhan.
One of the experts involved in the new studies, virologist Professor David Robertson, of the University of Glasgow, said he hopes they will ‘correct the false record that the virus came from a lab’.
But critics have played down or disputed the findings entirely, and warned both studies were carried out by the same group of academics who have regularly argued in favour of the natural origin theory…
