Tulane University Virologist, Dr. Robert Garry, headed up a team of international scientists who tracked down the starting point of when Sars CO-V-2 passed from an infected animal to a human being. And no, it wasn't from a bat.
“This is the largest in-depth study of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 that we've been able to do yet,” said Garry, professor of microbiology and immunology at Tulane University School of Medicine. “This gives us a very granular, very detailed idea about those early days…basically December of 2019, where we can actually pinpoint the location of where this virus emerged into the human population.”
Dr. Garry and his team took on finding the source of COVID-19:
"We actually worked with a bunch of scientists from all over the world, Australia, Europe and in the U.S. To look at all the data that was out there and available. Some of the data was pretty obscure and we were able to piece together quite a few details about how SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, first entered the human population."
Garry says the search for the starting point began when the pandemic first broke out.
"We've been working on the origin of SARS-CoV-2 for about two-and-a-half years," Garry explains. "Ever since back in January of 2020 when we first got the genetic sequence of the virus and tried to determine where it might have come from."
Using all the tracking techniques and clues research could provide them, Garry and his team progressed back through the life of COVID to find where it likely first started.
"We were actually able to pinpoint down to a particular location in the [Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market] there were stalls that were actually selling animals like the raccoon dogs and foxes and rabbits and things like that that we know are very susceptible to SARS-CoV-2."
Mind you this market is like a large fresh meat and fish market found in large Eastern U.S. Cities like Boston, New York or Philadelphia. Stalls with fresh animals, usually dispatched in the morning and dressed and prepared for sale all day long is the norm there. Cleanliness standards are more than likely not maintained. Huanan Market is the size of a football field. And although that may sound big, remember, Wuhan has a population of 10-million people—bigger than New York City.
"All those positive environmental samples basically focused on this one small area of the market that we were able to determine was the place where they were selling live raccoon dogs and other SARS susceptible animals."
Garry explain how the animal to human transfer may have taken place:
"SARS causes a serious infection [in animals] just like it does in people. And so respiratory secretions, handling the animals, that's a perfectly legitimate way that a person could be exposed to an animal then get infected with it."
One of the key findings in the study is that early COVID-19 patients who were “unlinked” to the market — meaning they didn’t work there, didn’t know someone who worked there and had not recently visited there — lived closer to the market than patients with a direct link to the market. Researchers suspect that these patients were exposed as the outbreak migrated into the surrounding neighborhood.
So the rumors and stories about COVID coming from cooked bats, starting in a biological weapons laboratory, or whatever is just that, rumors. SARS jumped from an infected animal to humans at a stall at a busy public market. From there it became airborne and the rest is history.