The pangolin and its scaly armor have been a convenient excuse. But the small mammal is not the animal that transmitted SARS-CoV-2 to humans. While the scientific community has not yet managed to determine with certainty the origin of Covid-19, a study, published Thursday, September 19, 2024 in the scientific journal Cellsupports the hypothesis that the virus was indeed transmitted by wild animals sold in the Huanan market, in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
With this study, scientists have “highlighted that the genetic diversity of the virus present in the market was representative of the genetic diversity of early human cases of the pandemic”they say.
In other words, this “provides very strong evidence that the market’s wildlife stalls […] were a hotbed of the Covid-19 pandemic,” according to James Wood, an epidemiologist at the University of Cambridge, interviewed by Science Media Center.
Masked civets, bamboo rats and raccoon dogs
But this study, instead of citing the pangolin as an intermediate host between the bat and humans, mentions two small carnivorous mammals (the masked civets and the raccoon dogs) and a rodent (the bamboo rat).
These results are based on the analysis of more than 800 samples, collected in January 2020, in this market where different species of wild animals were sold. Thanks to the genetic sequencing of these samples, scientists were able to highlight the joint presence of genetic material from the virus and these wild animals.
“They were photographed in the Huanan market. Yet they were not included in the 2021 WHO report, as if they did not exist”explains CNRS researcher Florence Débarre, one of the authors of this study, to the HuffPost.
Pangolin wrongly accused
And what about the pangolin? “There are no pangolins detected in the market samplesspecifies Florence Débarre. Either because they were not present there, but also possibly because they would have been elsewhere than in the areas sampled.” The CNRS scientist adds: “We favor the first explanation.”
According to her, if the pangolin was quickly singled out, it was because of a misinterpretation of a scientific result given during a press conference in February 2020.