Society

Nearly 5 years after the appearance of Covid-19, research to discover the origin of the pandemic continues. Although it's still difficult to establish absolute certainty, a recent scientific study reinforces the hypothesis that the virus was transmitted to humans by infected animals in the Wuhan market.

Florence Débarre, a researcher at the CNRS, explains the results of her research in an interview with the newspaper Le Parisien. "Our study confirms that there were wild animals in this market at the end of 2019, notably belonging to species such as raccoon dogs and civets. And that these animals were present in the southwest corner of the market, which also happens to be an area where a lot of Sars-CoV-2 virus, responsible for Covid-19, has been detected".

The study also identified the original strain of the virus in samples taken from the market. According to James Wood, an epidemiologist at the University of Cambridge, "it provides very strong evidence showing that the wildlife stalls in the market (...) were a hotbed of the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic".

Risks still present today

James Wood emphasizes that this scientific work is essential. "Little or nothing has been done to limit the trade in live wild animals, the loss of biodiversity or changes in land use, which are the real likely drivers of past and future pandemic emergences", he laments.

(MH with EdMar – Source/Le Parisien - Illustration/Prasesh Shiwakoti (Lomash)/Unsplash)