A study on the origin of Covid-19 provided new evidence on Thursday supporting the theory that humans first caught the virus from infected animals at a Chinese market in late 2019.
Nearly five years after Covid first emerged, the international community has not been able to determine with certainty exactly where the virus came from.
The first cases were detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019, but there have been bitter disputes between proponents of the two main theories.
One is that the virus leaked from a Wuhan lab which studied related viruses, while the other is that people caught Covid from an infected wild animal being sold at a local market.
The scientific community has favored the latter theory, but the controversy has rumbled on.
The study published in the Cell journal is based on more than 800 samples collected at Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Market, where wild mammals were also believed to have been for sale.
The samples were collected in January 2020 after the market was shuttered, and were not taken directly from animals or people but from the surfaces of stalls selling wildlife, as well as from drains.
The Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, where an early cluster of Covid cases emerged, pictured closed in April 2020 © Hector RETAMAL / AFP/File
From this type of data, which was shared by the Chinese authorities,
