A study published in the prestigious journal Nature acknowledges for the first time that wild animals susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection are commercially available, including raccoon dogs, among the many genetic traces of SARS-CoV-2 and humans.
But the authors suggest that rather than downplaying the possibility that the spread of the virus from wild animals to humans in a crowded market was the spark that ignited the pandemic, the virus was introduced to the market through humans or frozen food.
Samples were collected from January to March 2020, and the draft work was only published as a preprint in February 2022. The preprint showed that the virus had spread to people in the market before it closed on the morning of January 1, 2020.
The study also tested some animals on the market, mainly rabbits, stray cats and snakes, but all were negative for SARS-CoV-2. However, the analysis is flawed: it points to the existence of animals that are almost certainly not on the market, including pandas, chimpanzees and Atlantic gray seals.
Source: Ferra
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