For over 5 months now, the Chinese government and other health officials have been telling the world that coronavirus originated in bats, then jumped to humans via an intermediary animal species. Now, new truths have emerged.
Now according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has now ruled out the market as a possible origin site for the outbreak. Instead, it said it may have been the site of an early super-spreader event. Gao Fu, the director of the Chinese CDC, told Chinese state media: “It now turns out that the market is one of the victims.”
Initially, authorities in Wuhan, China, had reported that the first cases of the virus emerged at the local Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. But following an investigation of the animals sold there, the Chinese CDC said this week that it has ruled the site out as the origin point of the outbreak. This report from Chinese health authorities may further corroborate another report from high level U.S. government sources that said they believe coronavirus originated from Wuhan Virology laboratory, but not as a bioweapon.
According to the Wall Street Journal report, animals sold at the market were not infected with the virus, tests showed, which suggests that they couldn’t have infected shoppers. Wall Street Journal said:
Separately, China’s top epidemiologist said Tuesday that testing of samples from a Wuhan food market, initially suspected as a path for the virus’s spread to humans, failed to show links between animals being sold there and the pathogen. Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said in comments carried in Chinese state media, “It now turns out that the market is one of the victims.”
In the meantime, back in January 2020, The Lancet, a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal, published a study that challenges the hypothesis that Wuhan seafood market may not be source of the novel coronavirus that has claimed at least 42,114 lives globally. The paper, written by a large group of Chinese researchers from several institutions, offers details about the first 41 hospitalized patients who had confirmed infections with what has been dubbed 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). The paper, however, did not say the virus originated from bats. As confirmed cases of a COVID-19 surge around the world, all eyes have so far focused on a seafood market in Wuhan, China, as the origin of the outbreak.
