The Chinese knew that the Wuhan market could be dangerous. For five years

In December 2019, the coronavirus pandemic began in Wuhan. It turns out that Chinese experts suspected that this could happen from 2014. Already then, the Huanan wet market was identified as a potential source of a new zoonotic virus epidemic.

1. Animals – often wild, are sold at a Wuhan wet market. Some of them are still alive
2. Dr. Holmes, who visited the market in 2014, said that cages with animals were placed on top of each other
3. Dr. Holmes is not sure if the Chinese took any steps to prevent a pandemic from breaking out
4. You can find more such stories on the TvoiLokony home page

Virologist on Wuhan Market: Plague Incubator

At the end of 2019, the eyes of the whole world turned to Wuhan and the Huanan Wet Market. This is where the coronavirus pandemic was to begin. It turns out that long before 2019, scientists had already suspected that a live animal market in a Chinese city could become a place where a dangerous virus would get out of hand.

Dr. Eddie Holmes, an evolutionary biologist and virologist, told The Telegraph that he was in China in 2014. There, he participated in a project aimed at finding new pathogens with pandemic potential in China. Members of the Wuhan Center for Disease Control took him to a Wuhan wet market to show off where the virus could spread from animals to humans.

— I’ve been to a few of these fairs, but this particular one felt like a plague incubator. Exactly the type of place where the disease can appear Dr. Holmes said.

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Dr. Holmes remembered the Wuhan wet market as a place where cages with wild animals were placed one above the other. Inside were fish, snakes, rodents and Asian raccoon dogs (this animal is susceptible to COVID-19).

As Dr. Holmes admitted, many of these animals were still alive.

The virologist in an interview with “The Telegraph” also said that he is not sure whether the Wuhan Center for Disease Control has taken any measures to reduce the risk of virus transmission. The Chinese CDC, in turn, did not answer the newspaper whether anything had been done to prevent the outbreak of the pandemic in the years leading up to the pandemic.

SARS-CoV-2 and Wuhan market. How did the pandemic start?

Five years after Dr. Holmes visited a Wuhan wet market, on December 31, 2019, ‘mysterious pneumonia’ was detected in employees and customers. A total of 41 people were hospitalized, of which two-thirds were at the market. This one was officially closed on January 1, 2020.

Scientists are constantly wondering if the COVID-19 pandemic started at a Wuhan market, or if there was simply a wider transmission of the coronavirus that has been around for some time there. The World Health Organization (WHO) has concluded that the virus probably “jumped” from bats to humans via a hitherto unidentified animal. In turn, the alternative scenario may confirm, inter alia, the fact that further research discovered that the first sick person to have had a connection with a Wuhan wet market was an infected person on December 12.

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There is also a study by scientists from the University of California, University of Arizona and the San Diego School of Medicine. Researchers analyzed models of the spread of the coronavirus, including the genetic diversity of the virus in China, reports of the earliest cases of COVID-19 in the country, but also information about previous outbreaks. The report was published on April 18, 2021 in the scientific journal Science.

According to scientists, it is unlikely that the Wuhan market is a true “zero point” of the pandemic that has spread around the world.

– Our findings show that the first case of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection must have occurred between mid-October and mid-November 2019, the researchers wrote.

Researchers conducted a simulation which shows that in most cases, zoonotic viruses die out spontaneously before an epidemic or pandemic occurs. According to the scientists, SARS-CoV-2 was an unfortunate coincidence. A coincidence could be responsible for the pandemic – an infected person, crowds and poor ventilation at a Wuhan market.

– If things had turned out a little differently, had the first infected person who introduced the pathogen to the Wuhan market decided not to go shopping that day or were too sick to go there and just stayed home, then this or that early spread SARS-CoV-2 may not have materialized. Then we might never have heard of it, said lead researcher Michael Worobey, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona.

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