The Beijing News:

We have noted that some international experts have come up with different research results based on the early research data from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market uploaded by the China CDC to the GISAID platform. What do you think is the reason for the differences? Are they out of different analysis methods or because of other reasons? Thank you.

Tong Yigang:

Thank you for your question. You may obtain different results using different methods, software and parameters when analyzing the uploaded data. However, our analysis of DNA barcodes in the data found that the host information of these environmental samples was mostly from people, and human gene abundance was the highest, suggesting that the virus in the seafood market environment likely came from early patients. In addition, analysis of DNA barcodes also revealed the presence of pigs, cows, chickens, ducks and other species at the market before it was closed. Some experts noted the presence of some animal genes in the samples, and suspected that these animals had passed the virus on to people at the market. The data that has been obtained so far shows no signs of the virus infecting animals at the market. Therefore, these speculations are actually unscientific, and the results of our experiments do not support animals at the seafood market being the animal origin of SARS-CoV-2. Moreover, the environmental samples were collected in January 2020, after the emergence of early cases. Therefore, even if there had been infected animals at the seafood market, it is possible that the animals were infected by humans, rather than vice versa. Therefore, we believe that there is no scientific basis for the claims of the so-called animal-to-human transmission at the market. These are just subjective assumptions. Thank you.