A team of scientists, including one in Saskatoon, say they have strong evidence that the COVID-19 virus jumped from infected animals to humans, rather than originating from a laboratory leak.
The analysis of hundreds of genetic samples provides strong but circumstantial evidence that the pandemic's origin is connected to the wildlife trade in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, said Angie Rasmussen, a study co-author and virologist at the University of Saskatchewan's Vaccine and Infection Disease Organization.
The study,
published this fall in the journal Cell, shows the virus emerged at the market in Wuhan, China, at the same time as the pandemic began in the human population, suggesting it was the place of origin and linked to the live animals that were being sold there.
"It's very difficult to explain any other way, besides that virus was brought there with those live animals and it spilled over, twice actually
, into the human population at the market," she said.
There had been two main theories about the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, declared by the World Health Organization in March 2020. One was that the virus jumped from an infected animal to a human, most likely at the market; the second was that the virus was leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
