A US study has revealed that the first person who got infected with the coronavirus was a market seller in Wuhan, not an accountant. The study claimed that earlier investigations by China and the World Health Organization (WHO) on the chronology of the Kovid-19 pandemic have gone wrong.
According to a report published on Thursday in the journal Science, an accountant in Wuhan developed Covid-19 symptoms eight days later than initially reported.
“The earliest known case is now of a female vendor at Huanan Market,” said Michael Vorobey, chief of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. He said the December 8 case has been used by lab leak proponents to argue that the virus could not have emerged in the market.
“There was a tragic failure of China’s much-publicized Pneumonia of Unknown Etiology (PUE) system, where doctors must rapidly report unexplained pneumonia cases to national authorities via an Internet-based platform,” he said. ,
According to the scientist, the confusion was caused by complications of dental work, which sickened the 41-year-old on December 8. The fever and other coronavirus symptoms began on 16 December when several workers at the Huanan market were already displaying signs of infection. The study said that including seafood sellers whose symptoms began on December 11.
Vorobey said the accountant lived 30 kilometers (19 mi) away from the market and had nothing to do with it. He was probably infected by community transmission after the virus spread in Wuhan.
The origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 remains a mystery and is a major source of tension between China and the United States.
Scientists have not yet determined the origin of SARS-CoV-2. The debate about its origins roughly encompasses two competing views: migration from a laboratory or spread from animals.
The WHO this year rejected the theory that Covid-19 originated in a laboratory, saying it was most likely to infect humans naturally, perhaps through the wildlife trade.
Vorobey said that no live mammal collected at the Huanan market or any other live-animal market in Wuhan has been screened for the SARS-CoV-2-related virus, and that the Huanan market was closed and 1 January was disinfected.
“Nevertheless, the earliest symptomatic cases were associated with Huanan Market – particularly in the western section where raccoon dogs were caged – providing strong evidence of the epidemic’s live-animal market origins,” he said.
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