World

An animal market in China’s Wuhan really was the epicenter of the Covid pandemic, according to a pair of new studies in the journal Science published Tuesday that claimed to have tipped the balance in the debate about the virus’ origins.

Answering the question of whether the disease spilled over naturally from animals to humans, or was the result of a lab accident, is viewed as vital to averting the next pandemic and saving millions of lives.

The first paper analyzed the geographic pattern of Covid cases in the outbreak’s first month, December 2019, showing the first cases were tightly clustered around the Huanan Market. 

The second examined genomic data from the earliest cases to study the virus’ early evolution, concluding it was unlikely the coronavirus circulated widely in humans prior to November 2019.

Both were previously posted as “preprints” but have now been vetted by scientific peer review and appear in a prestigious journal.

Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, who co-authored both papers, had previously called on the scientific community in a letter to be more open to the idea that the virus was the result of a lab leak.

But the findings moved him “to the point where now I also think it’s just not plausible that this virus was introduced any other way than through the wildlife trade at the Wuhan market,” he told reporters on a call about the findings.

Though previous investigation had centered on the live animal market, researchers wanted more evidence to determine it was really the progenitor of the outbreak, as opposed to an amplifier.

This required neighborhood-level study within Wuhan to be more certain the virus was “zoonotic” — that it jumped from animals to people.

The first study’s team used mapping tools to determine the location of most of the first 174 cases identified by the World Health Organization, finding 155 of them were in Wuhan.

Further, these cases clustered tightly around the market — and some early patients with no recent history of visiting the market lived very close to it.

Mammals now known to be infectable with the virus — including red foxes, hog badgers and raccoon dogs, were all sold live in the market, the team showed.

– Two introductions to humans –

The study authors also tied positive samples from patients in early 2020 to the western portion of the market, which sold live or freshly butchered animals in late 2019.

The tightly confined early cases contrasted with how it radiated throughout the rest of the city by January and February, which the researchers confirmed by drilling into social media check-in data from the Weibo app.

“This tells us the virus was not circulating cryptically,” Worobey said in a statement. “It really originated at that market and spread out from there.”

The second study focused on resolving an apparent discrepancy in the virus’ early evolution.

Two lineages, A and B, marked the early pandemic. 

But while A was closer to the virus found in bats, suggesting the coronavirus in humans came from this source and that A gave rise to B, it was B that was found to be far more present around the market.

The researchers used a technique called “molecular clock analysis,” which relies on the rate at which genetic mutations occur over time to reconstruct a timeline of evolution — and found it unlikely that A gave rise to B.

“Otherwise, lineage A would have had to have been evolving in slow motion compared to the lineage B virus, which just doesn’t make biological sense,” said Worobey.

Instead, the probable scenario was that both jumped from animals at the market to humans on separate occasions, in November and December 2019. The researchers concluded it was unlikely that there was human circulation prior to November 2019.

Under this scenario, there were probably other animal-to-human transmissions at the market that failed to manifest as Covid cases.

“Have we disproven the lab leak theory? No, we have not. Will we ever be able to know? No,” said co-author Kristian Anderson of The Scripps Research Institute.

“But I think what’s really important here is that there are possible scenarios and they’re plausible scenarios and it’s really important to understand that possible does not mean equally likely.”

The jacket worn by US astronaut Buzz Aldrin during his 1969 flight to the Moon aboard Apollo 11 was sold at auction for $2.7 million in New York Tuesday, Sotheby’s announced.

The white jacket, adorned with an American flag, NASA’s initials, a patch for the Apollo 11 mission and the name “E. ALDRIN,” is part of a personal collection of items the 92-year-old astronaut decided to put up for sale. 

“The exceptionally rare garment was chased by multiple bidders for almost ten minutes before selling to a bidder on the phone,” Sotheby’s said in a statement. 

“After deep consideration, the time felt right to share these items with the world, which for many are symbols of a historical moment, but for me have always remained personal mementos of a life dedicated to science and exploration,” Aldrin, the last living member of Apollo 11’s three-member flight crew, said in a statement last week. 

He explained the jacket was separate from the spacesuit he wore while walking on the moon with fellow astronaut Neil Armstrong, but that he wore it while flying to and from the Moon. 

“I wore this Inflight Coverall Jacket… in the Command Module Columbia, on our historic journey to the Moon and back home again during the Apollo 11 mission,” Aldrin said.

The suits worn on the Moon by Aldrin and Armstrong are part of the National Air and Space Museum’s collections in Washington. 

In total, the New York auction garnered $8.2 million for 68 items sold out of the 69 offered, including $819,000 for a flight plan. 

More human remains have been found at a lake near Las Vegas, officials said, months after the rapidly receding waters of drought-hit Lake Mead revealed the corpse of a long-submerged mob victim.

Park rangers responded Monday afternoon to a witness report of a body at Swim Beach and have begun efforts to recover the remains, the National Park Service said.

No details were immediately provided about the age or identity of the most recent discovery, with the local county coroner set to conduct an autopsy.

The giant man-made reservoir drew global attention in May when the decades-old skeleton of a man shot in the head were found stuffed in a barrel that had been dumped in the lake.

Police believe that murder occurred in the late 1970s or early 1980s, when the Las Vegas criminal underworld was particularly active in the desert gambling capital.

Another body was found days later, with no evidence of foul play, and authorities had predicted more bodies would be found as water levels drop in the country’s biggest reservoir.

A historic drought that is gripping much of the western United States is putting a strain on water sources, with reservoirs and lakes falling to unprecedently low levels.

Lake Mead once sat 1,200 feet above sea level. But after more than two decades of drought, it was at only 1,040 feet above sea level Tuesday — its lowest level since filling in the 1930s.

It is currently falling about 12 inches every week.

Moscow said Tuesday it was leaving the International Space Station “after 2024” amid tensions with the West, in a move analysts warned could lead to a halt of Russian-crewed flights.

The confirmation of the long-mooted move comes as ties unravel between the Kremlin and the West over Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine and several rounds of devastating sanctions against Russia, including its space sector.

Space experts said Russia’s departure from the International Space Station would seriously affect the country’s space sector and deal a significant blow to its programme of crewed flights, a major source of Russian pride.

“Of course, we will fulfil all our obligations to our partners, but the decision to leave this station after 2024 has been made,” Yury Borisov, the new head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, told President Vladimir Putin, according to a Kremlin account of their meeting.

“I think that by this time we will start putting together a Russian orbital station,” Borisov added, calling it the domestic space programme’s main “priority”.

“Good,” Putin replied.

The ISS is due to be retired after 2024, although US space agency NASA says it can remain operational until at least 2030.

The ISS was launched in 1998 at a time of hope for US-Russia cooperation following their Space Race competition during the Cold War.

The United States said it was taken by surprise by the announcement.

“It’s an unfortunate development given the critical scientific work performed at the ISS, the valuable professional collaboration our space agencies have had over the years,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said. 

In a statement to AFP, NASA administrator Bill Nelson said the agency “has not been made aware of decisions from any of the partners, though we are continuing to build future capabilities to assure our major presence in low-Earth orbit”.

Until now, space exploration has been one of the few areas where cooperation between Russia and the United States and its allies had not been wrecked by tensions over Ukraine and elsewhere.

– ‘Like an old woman’s flat’-

Russia is heavily reliant on imports of everything from manufacturing equipment to consumer goods, and the effects of Western sanctions are expected to wreak havoc on the country’s economy in the long term.

Space expert Vadim Lukashevich said space science cannot flourish in a heavily sanctioned country.

“If the ISS ceases to exist in 2024, we will have nowhere to fly,” Lukashevich told AFP. “At stake is the very preservation of manned flights in Russia, the birthplace of cosmonautics.”

Pointing to Russia’s growing scientific and technological isolation, Lukashevich said the authorities could not plan more than several months in advance and added that even if Russia builds an orbiting station, it would be a throwback to the 1980s.

“It will be archaic, like an old woman’s flat, with a push-button telephone and a record player,” he said.

Space analyst Vitaly Yegorov struck a similar note, saying it was next to impossible to build a new orbiting station from scratch in a few years.

“Neither in 2024, nor in 2025, nor in 2026 will there be a Russian orbital station,” Yegorov told AFP.

He added that creating a fully-fledged space station would take at least a decade of “the most generous funding”.

Yegorov said Russia’s departure from the ISS meant Moscow might have to put on ice its programme of manned flights “for several years” or even “indefinitely”.

The move could also see Russia abandon its chief spaceport, Baikonur, which it is renting from Kazakhstan, Yegorov said.

Russian Soyuz rockets were the only way to reach the International Space Station until SpaceX, run by billionaire Elon Musk, debuted a capsule in 2020.

– ‘Difficult to restore’ –

The Soviet space programme can boast of a number of key accomplishments, including sending the first man into space in 1961 and launching the first satellite four years earlier. These feats remain a major source of national pride in Russia.

But experts say Roscosmos is now a shadow of its former self and has in recent years suffered a series of setbacks, including corruption scandals and the loss of a number of satellites and other spacecraft.

Borisov, appointed in mid-July, replaced Dmitry Rogozin, a firebrand politician known for his bombastic statements.

Rogozin had previously warned that without cooperation from Moscow, the ISS could de-orbit and fall on US or European territory.

In a possible sign of disagreement with Borisov, Vladimir Solovyov, chief designer at spacecraft manufacturer Energia, said Russia should not rush to quit the ISS.

“If we halt manned flights for several years, then it will be very difficult to restore what has been achieved,” he was quoted as telling the Russky Cosmos magazine.