After months of investigation, the World Health Organization (WHO) has determined that wildlife ranches in China are likely the source of the COVID-19 pandemic
These wildlife ranches, many of which are in or around South China’s Yunnan province, likely supplied animals to vendors at Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where early cases of COVID-19 were discovered last year, says Peter Daszak, an ecologist at WHO. team that traveled to China, told NPRSome of these wild animals may have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 from bats in the area.
The WHO is expected to publish its findings in a report in the coming weeks.
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In January, a WHO team of experts traveled to China to investigate how the deadly pandemic, which has now infected more than 120 million people and killed 2.6 million people worldwide, first started. Live Science previously reportedThere is a plethora of conspiracy theories scattered about the origin of the virus, including that the virus escaped a Wuhan lab. Last month, WHO researchers rejected that statement.
The general consensus among scientists was that the coronavirus was circulating among bats and hopping on humans, likely through an intermediate species. That’s exactly what WHO studies have found: The virus has likely been transmitted from bats in southern China to animals on wild 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 gap between rural and urban, Daszak and NPR said.
“They take exotic animals, such as civets, porcupines, pangolins, raccoon dogs and bamboo rats, and breed them in captivity,” Daszak told NPR.
But in February 2020, China closed those farms, likely because the Chinese government thought they were part of the transmission path from bats to humans, Daszak said. The government sent the farmers instructions on how to bury, kill or burn the animals in a way that would not spread the disease, Daszak told NPR.
Many of these farms breed animals that can carry coronaviruses, including civets, cats and pangolins. Most are located in or near Yunnan Province in southern China, where scientists previously discovered a bat virus 96% comparable according to SARS-CoV-2, according to NPR. The WHO still does not know which animal has transmitted the virus from bats to humans.
“I really think SARS-CoV-2 first hit people in southern China. It looks like this,” Daszak told NPR. WHO also found evidence that these wildlife farms were supplying suppliers to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.
“China is not closing that path for nothing,” said Daszak. Namely, that they probably thought this was the most likely path of transmission, which is also what the WHO report will conclude, he added.
You can read the whole story on NPR.
Originally published on Live Science.