Explained: What Chinese researchers found out about origin of Covid-19 from Wuhan market data

Chinese researchers have disclosed their findings from a 2020 Wuhan market sample collection conducted during the Covid-19 epidemic, according to reports in the country's domestic media on Friday. While it did not solve the question of the pandemic's beginning, it did reveal important information that may help researchers looking into the origins of the Covids.

This is the first time that biological evidence from the Wuhan wet market has been subjected to a rigorous scientific evaluation, and the results were published in Nature on April 5. 

“First peer-reviewed analysis of the Chinese swabs confirms animal DNA was present in samples that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2,” the magazine said.

It has been speculated that the coronavirus pandemic began at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. Opinions amongst specialists are divided as to whether or not the pandemic was started in a lab or transmitted to people by animals in the wild.

“This suggests that it’s possible an animal could have been an intermediate host of a virus that spilled over to infect humans. But researchers say the latest findings still fall short of providing definitive proof that SARS-CoV-2 originated from an animal-to-human spillover event,” said the Nature article.

French evolutionary researcher Florence Débarre told the magazine that the disclosed genome data is one of the most crucial data sets we've received since the onset of the epidemic.

Once the Hunan market shut down permanently on January 1, 2020, researchers claim to have snagged 923 samples. After collecting 457 samples beginning on January 18 from 18 different kinds of animals, including "unsold contents of refrigerators and freezers, swabs from stray animals, and the contents of a fish tank," researchers were able to successfully isolate three different live viruses.

Also, READ: 'Fake news': Punjab Police deny report of Amritpal Singh's surrender

Key contributors to the study included William J. Liu, Peipei Liu, Wenwen Lei, Zhiyuan Jia, and Xiaozhou He of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing; Weifeng Shi of the Shandong Academy of Medical Sciences in Tai'an; and Yun Tan of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) School of Medicine.