Delayed report on Wuhan wet market reveals crucial details on COVID-19 origin

A man wearing face mask stands on a balcony above closed shops blocked by barricades in Wuhan. (Image: Reuters)

The COVID-19 origin story continues to be a mystery mired in contentious geopolitical debate. However, a research paper that could not be published for the past year and a half has been found to contain meticulously collected data and photographic evidence that supported the initial hypothesis — that the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak started from an infected wild animal.

The report that was eventually published in June in the journal Scientific Reports, stated that minks, civets, raccoon dogs, and other mammals known to harbour coronaviruses were being sold for years in Wuhan, including in the Huanan wet market – which is linked to several of the earliest known COVID-19 cases.

Bloomberg reported that the data for the COVID-19 study was collected over 30 months by a virologist named Xiao Xiao, who is associated with the government-funded Key Laboratory of Southwest China Wildlife Resources Conservation and at Hubei University of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

He had started surveying shops selling live wild animals in Wuhan as early as 2017. At the time he was trying to locate the source of a tick-borne, Lyme-like disease that had infected some people years ago. He kept visiting 17 shops in Wuhan until November 2019, when the first few cases of the novel coronavirus disease were detected.

After the pandemic started spreading like wildfire, Xiao had collaborated with another researcher named Zhou Zhaomin along with three seasoned scientists to submit a manuscript to a journal based on his findings from the Wuhan market visits.

However, to their disappointment, their paper was rejected. Chris Newman, a British ecologist who also co-authored the paper, said: “We had imagined that the journal we sent it to would say, ‘Fantastic! Of course we want these data out as quickly as we can. The World Health Organization would be absolutely thrilled to receive this information…. But it was rejected. They did not think it would have widespread appeal.”

Earlier, Zhang Yongzhen and Edward Holmes -- the scientists who published the first gene sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 – had said: “Unfortunately, the apparent lack of direct animal sampling in the market may mean that it will be difficult, perhaps even impossible, to accurately identify any animal reservoir at this location.”

Notably, Geng Shuang, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, had denied that “wildlife wet markets” existed in the country. Chinese government researchers are also now dismissing the market hypothesis entirely.

Now, had the study got published in the early half of 2020, the search for the origins of the novel coronavirus could have taken a very different turn since Xiao is believed to have collected blood-sucking ticks from the wild animals that were being sold at the Wuhan market, which could be examined for traces of the coronavirus. Their study would have also helped establish that live animals were sold at the Wuhan market for human consumption. Xiao had collected conclusive evidence to prove the same.

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