After a months-long investigation, the World Health Organization (WHO) found that wildlife farms in China are probably the source of COVID-19 pandemic.
These wildlife farms, many of them in southern China’s Yunnan province, probably supplied animals to vendors at the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market in Wuhan, where the first cases of COVID-19 were discovered last year, Peter Daszak , a disease ecologist on the WHO team who traveled to China, told NPR. Some of these wild animals may have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 from bats in the area.
WHO is expected to disclose its findings in a report in the coming weeks.
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In January, a team of WHO experts traveled to China to investigate how the deadly pandemic, which has already infected more than 120 million people and killed 2.6 million worldwide, started for the first time, Live Science previously reported. A wave of conspiracy theories has spread about the virus’s origin, including that the virus escaped from a Wuhan laboratory. Last month, WHO researchers rejected that explanation.
The general consensus among scientists was that the coronavirus was circulating in bats and turning into humans, probably through an intermediate species. This is exactly what the WHO investigations found: the virus probably went from bats in southern China to animals on wildlife farms and then to humans.
The wildlife farms are part of a project that the Chinese government has been promoting for 20 years to lift rural populations out of poverty and close the rural-urban divide, according to Daszak and NPR.
“They take exotic animals, such as civets, hedgehogs, pangolins, raccoon dogs and bamboo mice, and raise them in captivity,” Daszak told NPR.
But in February 2020, China closed these farms, probably because the Chinese government thought they were part of the route of transmission from bats to humans, Daszak said. The government sent instructions to farmers on how to bury, kill or burn animals in a way that would not spread disease, Daszak told NPR.
Many of these farms raise animals that can carry coronaviruses, including civets, cats and pangolins. Most are located near southern China’s Yunnan province, where scientists previously discovered a bat virus that 96% similar for SARS-CoV-2, according to NPR. The WHO still does not know which animal transported the virus from bats to humans.
“I really think SARS-CoV-2 hit people for the first time in southern China. It’s what it looks like,” Daszak told NPR. WHO also found evidence that these wildlife farms provided vendors at Huanan’s Wholesale Seafood Market.
“China closes this path for a reason,” said Daszak. That is, they probably thought this was the most likely route of transmission, which is also what the WHO report will conclude, he added.
You can read the full story on NPR.
Originally published on Live Science.