Animal sold at the Wuhan market started covid pandemic ?

 Every now and then new theories have arisen for the starting of the covid pandemic since it started at the end of 2019. Most of the powerful countries including United States itself and some major countries from then European Union believed that it somehow begins intentionally in China due to the China's overwhelming ambitions of becoming the new superpower of the world leading the US behind.

Many survey were conducted in the different time phases and by different countries including WHO also. But none of this were successful to track the actual cause of the starter of the pandemic. 

Now a new study have been conducted which claims that the animals sold in the Wuhan market were the actual reason for the starting and the rise of the worldwide pandemic.

The World Health Organization recommended in June that researchers keep looking into all potential causes of the Covid-19 epidemic, including a lab leak. Despite completely different methodologies, two recently published research reach the same conclusion: The core of the coronavirus was most likely the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China.

The research were first made available online as preprints in February, but after undergoing peer review, they were finally published in the journal Science on Tuesday.

In one, a geographical and environmental investigation was conducted by scientists from all around the world using mapping software and social media posts. The virus was presumably present in live animals sold at the market in late 2019 despite the fact that the "precise circumstances remain unclear," they say. The animals were kept close to one another, making it easy for germs to spread. The study does not, however, identify which animals may have become ill.

The scientists came to the conclusion that the early Covid-19 cases were concentrated among market vendors who sold these live animals or among customers who went shopping there. They contend that two distinct viruses that were circulating in the animals and spread to people. According to the report, "all eight COVID-19 instances discovered before December 20th were from the western half of the market, where animal species were also sold." Human cases were predicted by their closeness to five stands that offered live or recently butchered animals.

According to research co-author Kristian Andersen, a professor in Scripps Research's Department of Immunology and Microbiology, "the clustering is very, very particular."According to another co-author and department chair of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, Michael Worobey, the "amazing" pattern that emerged from mapping these cases was quite obvious.

According to Worobey, the researchers identified the early cases that were unrelated to the market and involved persons who either resided or worked close to the market.As vendors entered other stores and infected employees there, Worobey said, "this is a sign that the virus started spreading in persons who worked at the market but then started that spread... into the surrounding local community."

The other investigation employs a molecular strategy and purports to pinpoint the moment when the first coronavirus infections spread from animals to people. This study demonstrates that the coronavirus most likely existed in two separate forms, A and B, during its inception. At least two cross-species transmission events into humans produced the lineages. According to the researchers, lineage B was responsible for the first animal-to-human transfer, which most likely occurred around November 18, 2019. Only those with a direct link to the Huanan market were discovered to have the lineage B type.

The authors contend that within weeks or possibly just a few days of the infection by lineage B, lineage A was transmitted from one animal to humans. Samples from people who frequented the market or lived nearby were found to be of lineage A. According to the study, "these results identify the small window between when SARS-CoV-2 first jumped into people and when the first instances of COVID-19 were identified," suggesting that it is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 disseminated widely in humans before November 2019. As with other corona viruses, the genesis of SARS-CoV-2 most likely followed a number of zoonotic incidents.

According to co-author Joel Wertheim, an associate adjunct professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, it is unlikely that such a virus would develop from two distinct incidents.

The barriers to spillover have been lowered to the point where multiple introductions, according to Wertheim, should actually be expected once all the conditions are met, which include a zoonotic virus capable of both human infection and human transmission that is in close proximity to humans. "Now, I realize it sounds like I just said a once-in-a-generation event happened twice in quick succession, and pandemics are indeed rare," Wertheim said. Andersen claimed that although the investigations don't completely refute the hypothesis of a lab leak, they are quite convincing and have caused him to rethink the virus's origins.

Before we dug in and took a deeper look, I was very certain there had been a lab leak, according to Andersen. I've persuaded myself that the data genuinely points to this specific market based on data and analysis I've conducted over the past ten years on numerous other infections.         

                                                                       -om_emigma