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Scientists struggle to probe COVID’s origins amid sparse data from China

Origin investigations typically take years, but some researchers say China is delaying the process for political reasons as international tensions rise.
  1. Amy Maxmen
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Scientists are anxious to obtain more data on the earliest days of the pandemic, following three tantalizing reports posted online in the past few weeks1,2,3. Although not yet published in peer-reviewed journals, the preprints provide further evidence supporting the hypothesis that the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 spread from animals to people who raised, butchered or bought them. But the reports don’t reveal exactly what happened.

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Nature 603, 773-775 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00732-0

References

  1. Gao, G. et al. Preprint at Research Square https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-1370392/v1 (2022).

  2. Worobey, M. et al. Preprint at Zenodo https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6299600 (2022).

  3. Pekar, J. E. et al. Preprint at Zenodo https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6291628 (2022).

  4. Zhou, P. et al. Nature 579, 270–273 (2020).

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  5. Xiao, X., Newman, C., Buesching, C. D., Macdonald, D. W. & Zhou, Z.-M. Sci. Rep. 11, 11898 (2021).

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  6. He, W.-T. et al. Cell https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2022.02.014 (2022).

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