The origin location of the coronavirus pandemic has been traced back to a Wuhan, China, market in two new studies that support the theory that the virus came from the wild and not a Chinese lab.
The studies were published on Tuesday in the journal Science and show that the epicenter of the pandemic was the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. In addition, scientists concluded in their research that the virus that causes COVID-19 was most likely transferred from animals to people on two different occasions.
A co-author of one of the studies, Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research professor Kristian Andersen shared with NBC News that the evidence they have uncovered all points to the same thing.
“It points right to this particular market in the middle of Wuhan,” Andersen said. “I was quite convinced of the lab leak myself until we dove into this very carefully and looked at it much closer.”
To uncover the location of the outbreak and discover where the virus that has now claimed the lives of over 6.4 million started, researchers collected data from Chinese Scientists while using mapping tools to estimate the locations of more than 150 of the earliest reported cases from December 2019.
Mapping of the data was done by Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona. While mapping, his team also examined cases from the first two months of 2020, analyzing data from an app that provided help for those with COVID.
Worobey shared during a press conference that there was one question they looked to answer: “Of all the locations that the early cases could have lived, where did they live?
“It turned out when we were able to look at this, there was this extraordinary pattern where the highest density of cases was both extremely near to and very centered on this market,” Worobey said. “Crucially, this applies both to all cases in December and also to cases with no known link to the market … And this is an indication that the virus started spreading in people who worked at the market but then started to spread into the local community.”
In the second study, a group of scientists looked at the genomic diversity of the virus inside and outside of China, with the earliest samples from December 2019 through mid-February 2020.
In the samples, researchers found two lineages of the virus that are believed to be linked to the beginning of the pandemic in Wuhan.
Joel Wertheim, a co-author of the study and viral evolution expert at the University of California, San Diego, shared that one of the lineages, A, is more similar to bat coronaviruses. In contrast, lineage B appeared to begin spreading earlier in humans.
When it comes to other suggested origins for the virus, mainly the lab leak theory, the World Health Organization has launched a more thorough investigation into its possibility. In addition, Andersen shared that the two studies don’t rule it out just yet.
“Have we disproven the lab leak theory? No, we have not,” Andersen said. “But I think what’s really important here is there are possible scenarios, and there are plausible scenarios, and it’s really important to understand that possible does not mean equally likely.”
While scientists still don’t all agree, some, like University of Minnesota researcher in the college of veterinary medicine, Matthew Aliota, shared that in his mind, the studies “kind of puts to rest, hopefully, the lab leak hypothesis.”
“Both of these two studies really provide compelling evidence for the natural origin hypothesis,” Aliota shared with NBC News.
As he described, the evidence presented in the studies “is maybe as close to a smoking gun as you could get.”
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