NEW—The #SARSCoV2 that causes #COVID19 could have started spreading in China as early as October 2019, two months before the first case was identified in the central city of Wuhan, a new study showed on Friday. 🧵
reuters.com/world/china/fi…
reuters.com/world/china/fi…
2) Researchers from Britain's University of Kent used methods from conservation science to estimate that SARS-CoV-2 first appeared from early October to mid-November 2019, according to a paper published in the PLOS Pathogens journal.
3) The most likely date for the virus's emergence was Nov. 17, 2019, and it had probably already spread globally by January 2020.
…some early cases had no known connection with Huanan, implying that SARS-CoV-2 was already circulating before it reached the market.
…some early cases had no known connection with Huanan, implying that SARS-CoV-2 was already circulating before it reached the market.
4) In a paper released in preprintform this week, Jesse Bloom of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle recovered deleted sequencing data from early COVID-19 cases in China.
5) The data showed that samples taken from the Huanan market were "not representative" of SARS-CoV-2 as a whole, and were a variant of a progenitor sequence circulating earlier, which spread to other parts of China.
6) US National Institutes of Health confirmed to Reuters that the samples used in the study were submitted to the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) in March 2020 & later deleted at the request of Chinese investigators, who said they would be updated & submitted to another archive.
7) Critics said the deletion was further evidence that China was trying to cover up the origins of COVID-19.
"Why would scientists ask international databases to delete key data that informs us about how COVID-19 began in Wuhan?" said @Ayjchan
"Why would scientists ask international databases to delete key data that informs us about how COVID-19 began in Wuhan?" said @Ayjchan
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