To him corona virus connected an international team of virologists to raccoon dogs sold at its food market Wuhanreinforcing the belief of the scientific community that the worst pandemic of the last century was caused by an infected animal that was illegally sold and infected people. (ps: The raccoon dog is a canine native to East Asia. It is not related to raccoons and is more closely related to the common fox than to the domestic dog).

Genetic samples taken at the Huanan food market in Wuhan in January 2020 confirmed a link between a raccoon dog and the coronavirus. However, even if a raccoon dog was infected, this does not mean that the mammal transmitted the virus to humans. Scientists explain that some other animal could act as the owner, and it is also possible that these raccoons were infected by a human carrier of the virus.

Analysis of genetic samples showed that Asiatic raccoons – furry mammals, relatives of foxes and known carriers of the coronavirus – left traces of the virus in their cells. This element greatly enhances the scenario that wants the coronavirus to pass to humans from a wild animal. The lab leak theory that the virus escaped from a research lab in Wuhan has gained support from a significant portion of the public due to a new US Department of Energy safety report as well as a US sworn investigation. House of Representatives.

However, genetic data from the Wuhan market strongly suggest that the virus is transmitted from animal to human without laboratory intervention. The new data also show that Chinese scientists they shied away from providing enough data that they had at their disposal to help the international scientific community during the first critical months of the pandemic.

In February 2022, Chinese virologists published a study of samples from the Wuhan market. The study confirmed that the samples were positive for the original coronavirus strain, but hypothesized that the raccoon dogs were infected by human carriers of the virus who shopped at the market. Chinese researchers have published their data in the international virological genetic database.

In early March, French biologist Florence Debaret realized that Chinese scientists had made public all the data from the Wuhan market that the West had been requesting since the spring of 2020. An international team of virologists who studied the samples focused on one particular one. The sample was taken from a market stall where a cage of raccoon dogs was placed on top of a cage of chickens, creating ideal conditions for the transmission of new viruses.

“We quickly realized that at least one of the genetic material samples contained raccoon DNA,” says Steven Goldstein, a virologist at the University of Utah. The scientific group invited their Chinese colleagues to cooperate in research. After this proposal, the data was suddenly removed from the database, although it is not clear who removed the published data and why.

“We have to be careful in our estimates as we don’t have an infected animal in our hands and so we can’t unequivocally prove our theory,” says Dr. Goldstein.