Michael Le Page is a person.
There is a sign pointing to a market in China where people were exposed to the coronaviruses.
Newscom's BJ Warnick is here.
An analysis of the earliest covid-19 cases has strengthened the case that the coronaviruses began when animals at the Huanan Market in Wuhan, China passed the virus on to people. The first case was that of a woman who worked as a seafood vendor at the market.
The bat coronaviruses are believed to be the source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It's not clear where it came from and how it got into people. The initial cases were clustered around the market, and it was thought that live animals might be the intermediate host.
The first person known to have contracted the disease was not connected to the market, according to a World Health Organization report. The report concluded that there was no firm conclusion about the market's role.
The 41-year-old accountant went to the hospital in December because of dental problems, but only developed symptoms on December 16th, according to the University of Arizona.
The dates are confirmed by interviews with the accountant, hospital records and a scientific paper. The seafood vendor who became ill on December 11th was linked to the market.
The team did speak to the accountant, but it's not clear why this is not in the WHO report. They were told that this was the December 8 patient, and just accepted it as read, according to Worobey. It would be interesting to learn more about that interview.
When asked if the report had gotten it wrong, a WHO spokesman said it was difficult to comment on specific cases. The team did meet with some early patients, but they were not epidemiological interviews collecting health data that would put them in the timelines, according to a spokesman. The interviews were done in 2020.
According to the WHO report, a third of the cases that were identified in December had links to the Huanan market. If the market was the source, this is in line with what one would expect. Many cases would not have a direct link to the source because of the infectious nature of the original virus.
Scientists call for urgent investigation into covid-19 animal origins.
It has been suggested that the strong link to the market is due to bias, because once authorities were aware of it on December 29, they began looking for cases linked to the market.
Looking at what happened at the three hospitals where doctors first realised something was amiss can be used to check this. They had identified 19 unexplained pneumonia cases, of which ten were linked to the market.
There was a lot of early covid-19 cases associated with the Huanan market.
Many early cases are linked to the market, and in particular to the western part of the market where live animals were housed. There are few symptoms of the disease in the dogs, but they can be an intermediate host.
The University of Glasgow's David Robertson says that the evidence shows that covid-19 has a live- animal-associated market origin. It's hard to say whether the initial transmissions were from animals to customers in the market or both.
Not everyone agrees. There is nothing new in this article which could make a natural origin of the disease more likely than a laboratory one, says Rossana Segreto at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.
The case for a lab origin has been weakened by recent findings. The wild viruses have features that are similar to the ones that were claimed to have arisen in a lab during the so-called gain-of-function experiments.
The journal is called Science.
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