After the bats and pangolins - main suspects since the beginning of the pandemic of having been intermediate hosts of the coronavirus - and after the minks that could transmit Covid to humans in intensive farming, it is up to two other animals to end up in the dock: we are talking about the badger-ferrets, a widespread species in China, and of rabbits. They too - among the animals that are sold as food in the Wuhan Chinese market, where many early cases of the disease have emerged - they enter among the potential suspects of having allowed the leap of species, transmitting the new coronavirus to humans.
At least, it is one of the possibilities on which the analyzes of the investigators of the World Health Organization, who returned from a two-week mission to Wuhan in recent days, focus on trying to identify the origin of Covid-19. Even if for the moment it is still only one of the many hypotheses on which the team investigations, who complained about the insufficient information provided by China on the first infections. For members of the World Health Organization team, reports the Wall Street Journal, other investigations are needed on the suppliers of these and other animals for sale at the Wuhan market.
And there is still no certainty whether the virus was first transmitted from animals to humans or if it was already circulating elsewhere. In any case, the passage from animal to man and vice versa would seem to be confirmed by the numerous cases detected in mink farms in Europe - killed by the millions in Denmark and other countries -, so much so as to have pushed the EU authorities for food safety and disease prevention to launch an alarm on Thursday to intensify tests on personnel of these structures and on animals (Ansa).