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Jan 30, 2022
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'Chinese health officials knew Wuhan\'s Huanan Seafood Market was a disease risk for years before the Covid pandemic started there, an Australian scientist has claimed.Professor Eddie Holmes, a virologist at the University of Sydney, said he was taken on a tour of the market by public health officials in the now-infamous city in 2014.Although the exact origin of the Covid pandemic is unknown, the disease is thought to have first emerged in the market, where caged wild animals were kept in close confines with human crowds.Professor Holmes told The Telegraph: \'The discussion was \"where could a disease emerge?\" Well, here’s the place – that’s why I went.\'The World Health Organization last week called for a ban on all global sales of living wild mammals in markets in a bid to prevent more diseases jumping from animals to humans.Scientists\' best theories suggest that the coronavirus first emerged in bats before transmitting to a bigger animal, potentially a pangolin, which was captured by people and taken into a market where the infection spread.The WHO and US intelligence officials are also investigating the not-yet-disproven possibility that the virus was leaked from a lab where scientists were studying it. . The Huanan market had one of these wild sections, where stalls can sell unusual or even rare animals, including snakes, beavers and porcupines. Government officials were photographed catching a salamander outside of the market in January last year.Professor Holmes said: \'I\'ve been to a few of these markets but this was a big one. It felt like a disease incubator – exactly the sort of place you would expect a disease to emerge.\' Share this article Share 380 shares He had gone on the mission as part of a project specifically to find viruses or bacteria that might cause a serious outbreak in the future. SARS, a bug almost identical to the Covid virus, also emerged in China in 2002 and was also transmitted from animals to humans. That epidemic was better contained because the virus did not spread as quickly and people had more obvious symptoms. The connection to the Huanan food market was made right at the start of the Covid pandemic, when officials found that around a third of the first 168 people to get infected had been there recently.Cases started to spring up in people across the city, home to 10million people, but the original outbreak was clearly linked to the market.It is unclear whether the virus first spread from an animal to a person inside the market – known as the spillover event – or whether it was the host of a super-spreader event when someone who was already infected walked into a crowd there.Some researchers suggest the virus was contracted by a farmer or visitor from somewhere more rural who then took it into the market and triggered an outbreak. Professor Holmes added: \'In my mind, the wildlife trade is the most likely source of it. \'The role of that market is still uncertain but there was clearly a lot of transmission'See also:
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