COVID pandemic: Researchers create shortlist of animals that could reveal Wuhan origins of virus

Researchers have created a shortlist of possible wildlife present at a market in Wuhan, China where the COVID-19 pandemic likely originated.

In a new study published on Thursday in the journal Cell, they analysed genetic data from more than 800 samples collected around the Huanan Seafood Wholesale market by Chinese authorities starting on January 1, 2020.

The Chinese scientists had published the sequences but did not identify the animals possibly infected with coronavirus.

"This may be the last big, new set of data directly from the market, and in a way, it's like finishing the last piece of a puzzle showing a picture that has been pretty clear already," Michael Worobey, a co-author on the paper from the University of Arizona in the US, said in a statement.

"We present a thorough and rigorous analysis of the data and how it fits in with the rest of the huge body of evidence we have about how the pandemic started".

The researchers found for instance that "the common raccoon dog was the most abundantly detected animal species in market wildlife stalls sampled on January 12 and in the wildlife stall with the most SARS-CoV-2-positive samples".

They also found civet cat and bamboo rat DNA in positive environmental samples of the virus, they said in the study.

"Many of the key animal species had been cleared out before the Chinese CDC teams arrived, so we can't have direct proof that the animals were infected," Florence Débarre, a co-author from the French National Centre for Scientific Research, said in a statement.

"We are seeing the DNA and RNA ghosts of these animals in the environmental samples, and some are in stalls where SARS-CoV-2 was found, too.

"This is what you would expect under a scenario in which there were infected