Covid: WHO accuses China, hid data on raccoon infection
The World Health Organization has criticized China for withholding research that may link the origin of Covid to wild animals. WHO also asked Beijing why the data was not made available three years ago, and why it is currently lost. The New York Times reports it. Before the Chinese data disappeared, an international team of virological experts had begun analyzing the research, which revealed the possibility that the virus could have been transmitted by specimens of raccoon dogs, a type of Asian fox widespread in the air. of the first contagion, and infected humans at the Wuhan fish market. But the gene sequence has been removed from the database. “These data – commented Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director general – could and should have been shared three years ago. Evidence must be shared immediately with the international community.” According to experts who have seen the report, there is evidence that raccoon dogs spread the virus at the Wuhan market. A French biologist discovered the genetic sequence in the database last week, and she and the team of researchers had begun to investigate further.
Covid from the raccoon dog sold in Wuhan: the hypothesis on the origin of the pandemic
For months, when the Sars-COV-2 coronavirus began to run faster and faster in humans in 2020, scientists were looking for the so-called ‘intermediate host’, an animal from which the virus would have made its leap into the species Human. Today, 3 years later, that question remains unanswered. And in this period of time in the debate among experts, the theory of a natural origin of the virus has alternated with the hypothesis of an escape from the laboratory. Today a new question arises: do those data uploaded by Chinese experts to the Gisaid international database and then removed contain any clues in this regard? Stit deals with the data cited by the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who during the press briefing asked for transparency from China, and greater sharing of information.
DG WHO explained that an international team of experts had time to download that information before it was removed. These scientists explained that the data in question was genetic data relating to samples taken from a market in Wuhan, the first Chinese metropolis overwhelmed by Covid. Data that could link, according to their hypothesis, the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus with the raccoon dogs for sale there, adding new evidence to the theory that the pandemic could have been triggered by an infected animal, treated through the illegal animal trade wild. The genetic data, reported the international media on which the news bounced, was extracted from swabs taken in and around the Huanan seafood wholesale market, starting in January 2020, shortly after the Chinese authorities they had closed the market suspecting it was linked to the outbreak of a new virus.
At that time the animals had been eliminated from the facility, but researchers swabbed the walls, floors, wire cages and trolleys used to transport cages, finding the virus. In the samples that tested positive for the coronavirus, the international research team found genetic material belonging to animals, including large amounts that matched the raccoon dog, explained the scientists involved in the analysis. What the analysis can establish is that there is the genetic signature of the raccoon dogs in the same place where the genetic material of the virus was left behind, but this mixing of genetic material cannot prove with certainty that the raccoon dog was itself infected. .
Another animal could have passed the virus to people, or someone infected could have passed the virus to a raccoon dog. The possibilities are varied. But the evidence gleaned from that data – later removed from the database – is consistent with a scenario that would see the virus spread to humans from a wild animal. The contents of the analysis were reported by some scientists who worked on it but, we read in the online ‘New York Times’, a report with all the details of the results of the international research team has not yet been published. Their analysis was first illustrated by ‘The Atlantic’. And what seems to emerge, among other things, is that Chinese scientists have provided an incomplete account of the evidence that can provide details on how the virus was spreading in the Huanan market. So much so that the DG WHO wanted to highlight once again the need to make all useful information available, and promptly. Returning to the story that sparked the spotlight today, Chinese scientists had published a study examining the same samples from the market in February 2022. That study reported that the samples tested positive for the coronavirus, but suggested that the virus came from people infected who shopped or worked in the market, rather than from animals sold there.
At one point those same researchers, including some affiliated with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, submitted raw swab data to the Gisaid viral sequence archive. On March 4, the French evolutionary biologist Florence Débarre was searching the database for information relating to the Huanan market when, according to what she said in an interview, she noticed that more sequences were popping up than usual. Virus experts have been waiting for that raw sequence data from the Chinese market ever since they learned of its existence in the February 2022 China report. Débarre said it alerted other scientists, including a team that published a series of studies last year. indicating the market as the origin. And so an international group of researchers set out to mine the new genetic data, “a mine of raw data,” she says.
Covid, the raccoon dog and the yellow of deleted data
One sample in particular caught their attention: it was taken in early 2020 from a trolley of a specific stall that contained raccoon dogs in a cage on top of another containing birds, the type of environment conducive to the transmission of new viruses. “At least one of these samples had a lot of raccoon dog nucleic acid, along with the virus nucleic acid,” said Stephen Goldstein, a virologist at the University of Utah who worked on the analysis.
After stumbling upon the new data, the international team says they contacted the Chinese researchers who had uploaded the files with an offer to collaboratetion. Subsequently, the sequences disappeared from Gisaid. It is unclear who removed them or why. Débarre said the team was looking for more data, including some from market champions, that had never been made public. “What is important – he pressed – is that there is even more data”.
A concept that was reiterated today by WHO experts: “Unfortunately” the new data that have become available “do not give an answer on how the pandemic started – specified Maria Van Kerkhove, Technical Lead of WHO for Covid-19 – but they provide more keys” to interpret and reconstruct what happened. “Once again we reiterate that there are many more studies to be performed – he added – Studies that have been recommended to understand and investigate a potential intermediate host, or a possible escape from the laboratory. These studies have yet to be conducted, to allow us to be conclusive about the origins of the pandemic”.
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