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Corona origin Wuhan: New study supports animal market thesis - lockdown again for the first time

2022-07-27T14:32:40.236Z


Corona origin Wuhan: New study supports animal market thesis - lockdown again for the first time Created: 07/27/2022, 16:14 By: Christiane Kuehl Corona origin in Wuhan: Workers in protective gear carry a bag containing a giant salamander said to have escaped from the Huanan animal market (stock image from January 2020). © picture alliance/dpa/CHINATOPIX/AP For the first time since the beginnin


Corona origin Wuhan: New study supports animal market thesis - lockdown again for the first time

Created: 07/27/2022, 16:14

By: Christiane Kuehl

Corona origin in Wuhan: Workers in protective gear carry a bag containing a giant salamander said to have escaped from the Huanan animal market (stock image from January 2020).

© picture alliance/dpa/CHINATOPIX/AP

For the first time since the beginning of the corona pandemic, people in Wuhan have to be quarantined again.

Two new studies, meanwhile, support the theory that the virus originated at the city's Huanan Animal Market.

Wuhan/Munich – Everyone knows Wuhan by now: At the beginning of 2020, the city was the place of origin of a mysterious disease that soon swept across the world.

And Wuhan was also the first city in the world to experience a full lockdown.

For weeks, people stayed in their homes, had food brought to them or sang on the balconies to encourage each other – while thousands died of Covid in the hospitals.

Since the lockdown on the Yangtze metropolis was lifted in spring 2020, Wuhan has lived largely unmolested by the virus.

But now, for the first time in more than two years, the authorities are isolating citizens of the city: almost a million people in the suburban district of Jiangxia have been sent into lockdown - because of four omicron cases discovered in the city, none of which showed symptoms.

All public transport has been halted and entertainment venues closed for three days after four asymptomatic cases were identified in the district on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, two new studies are also spotlighting Wuhan again.

A debate has been going on since 2020 as to whether the virus, as analyzed by China's experts, first jumped to humans at Wuhan's Huanan animal market - or whether it escaped from a nearby laboratory.

Skeptics in the USA and Australia have repeatedly insisted on this so-called laboratory thesis, which China has always indignantly rejected.

The new studies now again see the animal market as the starting point of the corona pandemic - and invalidate the theory of a laboratory accident as the cause.

The investigations showed “that it is simply not plausible that this virus was introduced to the Wuhan market in any way other than through the wild animal trade,” said one of the authors of the two studies, virologist Michael Worobey from the University of Arizona,

China: The author of the study was initially a supporter of the corona laboratory thesis

Worobey himself co-signed an open letter last year calling for the theory of a laboratory accident at the Institute of Virology in Wuhan to be further examined.

The knowledge gained since then would have made him rethink, the virologist said.

The virus “originated in this market and spread from there”.

The study was published in the US journal

Science

.

Soon after the outbreak of the corona pandemic, there was speculation that the virus could have escaped in an accident from the Institute of Virology in Wuhan, which also researches corona viruses.

It is not far from Huanan Market.

In January 2021, after some back and forth, an international team of experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) was able to visit Wuhan - including the laboratory.

The report presented by the experts did not provide clear results on the origin of the pandemic.

However, the WHO experts already classified the so-called laboratory theory as “extremely unlikely”.

Wuhan: Studies see animal market as the origin of the corona virus

One of the new studies now examined the geographical distribution of the first Covid cases in December 2019. It showed that these were closely located around the Huanan animal market.

Some of the first patients who had not recently visited the market lived in the immediate vicinity of the market.

The researchers also analyzed virus samples that they took on the market in January 2020.

According to reports, these were concentrated in the south-west part of the market, where live animals such as foxes and raccoon dogs were sold.

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The second study carried out a genome analysis of the virus that was detected in the first corona patients.

The researchers examined two tuning lines of the pathogen.

They concluded that both jumped from animals in the market to humans in separate events, in November and December 2019.

It is unlikely that the virus circulated in humans before November 2019, the scientists wrote.

China continues to adhere to zero-Covid policy: nervousness in Wuhan is growing

Meanwhile, nervousness is growing in Wuhan.

In other metropolises, too, longer lockdowns began with the sealing off of individual parts of the city.

China is strictly adhering to its zero-Covid policy, which responds with severe measures to even the smallest clusters of new infections.

Even in Shanghai, which was completely sealed off for weeks, things are far from over.

This week, according to

Caixin

magazine, the authorities instructed the residents of four neighborhoods to stay at home for a week.

Mass tests are underway in nine out of 16 districts these days.

China is currently reporting several hundred new infections across the country every day, mostly with the highly contagious Omicron BA.5 variant.

Japan's Nomura Bank estimated last week that around 264 million people in 41 Chinese cities were subject to some form of corona protection measures.

In the southern metropolis of Shenzhen, the authorities ordered that the 100 largest factories, including the iPhone manufacturer Foxconn, may only produce in the so-called “closed loop” mode for a week.

This means that all workers on company premises must isolate themselves.

(ck/AFP)

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2022-07-27

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