While the Covid-19 will no longer be as dangerous in the years to come as in 2020-2021, Florence Débarre, a French researcher, would accuse the raccoon dog as a new suspect in the spread of the virus.
After the pangolin, the bats and a leak in a laboratory, it’s the turn of the raccoon dog to be blamed for the spread of Covid-19. According to the new sample analyzes on the Wuhan market by the French researcher in evolutionary biology at the CNRS Florence Débarre, the raccoon dog would be the main causes of the escape of the virus. The samples had been collected two months after the Wuhan market closed in January 2020 due to the pandemic and came from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
“They may have been intermediate hosts between bats – reservoirs of the virus – and humans. In the list of suspects, the raccoon dog was very high”, comments the researcher.
These animals, which strangely resemble a raccoon, have the particularity of being very susceptible to infection by SARS-COV-2. This dog from Asia is very famous in the Wuhan market for its fur and meat. But according to virologists, this market would be the main focus of Covid-19 and the marketing of these raccoon dogs was illegal until November 2019. As a reminder, in Europe, this breed of dog is officially considered an invasive alien species. and its reproduction is considered a threat to public health.
For its part, the WHO reports a “significant step forward”, but she adds that “the data does not provide a definitive answer on how the pandemic began”.
The laboratory track is not abandoned
The track leading to the laboratory which would have leaked the virus is not abandoned. Although the WHO had dismissed this solution for a while, the organization reinstated it in the list of hypotheses to be studied. The FBI boss said it was very likely that the spread of Covid-19 was a “research accident”, as the scientists say.
