MELBOURNE, Australia — New data linking COVID-19 to raccoon dogs in a Wuhan wet market provides “important incremental evidence” supporting the hypothesis that the virus originated in wildlife, according to a scientist who has studied the genesis of the pandemic in China.
A new analysis of samples collected in January 2020 at the Huanan market in downtown Wuhan, where many of the early COVID cases emerged, found genetic evidence of the virus with large amounts of raccoon dog DNA, The Atlantic and New York Times reported this week. That’s a strong indication that the mammals, reportedly sold live in the food market and known to be susceptible to coronaviruses, were infected, said Dominic Dwyer, a medical virologist and infectious diseases physician.
“It’s not the ‘eureka’ moment, but it’s a pretty big advance,” said Dwyer, who was part of the joint mission to study COVID’s origins led by the World Health Organization in early 2021. The material was collected in an area of the market where cases were known to have occurred, he said in an interview Friday.
