International scientists released two major studies on Saturday in which one participant said it was “extraordinarily clear” that a market in Wuhan, China, was the source of the coronavirus that fueled the Covid-19 pandemic – not a Chinese one. Government laboratory, champion in principle. by right-wing campaigners, columnists, and politicians in the U.S.
The question of where Kovid-19 came from and how it spread has proved to be divisive.
The global death toll exceeds 5.9m after two years, with the caseload at 433.7m, according to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
The same sources say that over 947,000 people have died from Covid in the US with a caseload of nearly 79m.
In August last year, a US intelligence review of the issue proved inconclusive.
The New York Times was the first to report the new studies, which it said had not been published in any journals.
Michael Vorobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona and a co-author of both studies, told the paper: “When you look at all the evidence together, it’s an extraordinarily clear picture that the epidemic started in the Huanan market.”
A one-sentence summary of a study stated: “Geographical clustering of the earliest known COVID-19 cases and the proximity of environmental samples positive to live-animal vendors suggests that the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan originated from COVID-19.” was the site. -19 pandemic. ,
In the abstract of the second study, the scientists said: “Understanding the conditions that lead to epidemics is critical to their prevention.”
However, the issue of Chinese blame or otherwise has become both diplomatically sensitive and highly politicized, especially in the US.
Particularly clearly, Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has clashed repeatedly with Republican senators, prominently including Rand Paul of Kentucky, who champions the laboratory fundamentals.
In July 2021, Paul grilled Fauci about the “benefits of work” research on the virus in Chinese laboratories, and whether US funding for such research may have contributed to the COVID pandemic.
Fauci replied: “Senator Paul, you don’t know what you’re talking about, quite frankly. And, I want to say officially. You don’t know what you’re talking about. “
The two clashed again in January of this year, with Fauci accusing Paul of fundraising and “burning nuts” for his attacks, which put him and his family at risk.
The study, released on Saturday, was co-authored by scientists from the US, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, the UK (Oxford, Edinburgh and Glasgow), Canada, the Netherlands and Belgium.
