COVID-19 could not get to a person from bats

American scientists have found that the first outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 infection occurred in a market in Wuhan, where they sold wild animal meat. New research showedthat the carrier of the virus could be raccoon dogs - mammals that are eaten in China.

The report says that at the end of 2019, the coronavirus passed to humans twice from animals that were sold in the Wuhan market. The researchers conducted a genetic analysis of coronavirus samples collected from patients who became infected from December 2019 to January 2020. They also tracked the movements of these patients.

This work confirmed once again that the market in Wuhan was indeed the starting point of the pandemic. But there is no definitive evidence that the bat was the source of the original virus. Raccoon dogs are also capable of carrying SARS-CoV-2 and other types of coronavirus.

Virologist Vincent Munster of the National Institutes of Health in Hamilton, Montana, noted that the results of scientific work can be interpreted in other ways. According to him, the number of positive samples taken on the market does indicate an animal origin of the virus.

But it is too early to put an end to the study. Further analysis of SARS-CoV-2 and antibodies against it in blood samples taken from market employees and from carcasses of animals sold there, can provide more accurate evidence of origin COVID-19.