March 18, 202311:40 AM ET
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/18/1164527523/raccoon-dogs-coronavirus-wuhan-market
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A raccoon dog looks out of its cage in a Chinese live animal market in January 2004. Raccoon dogs could have been an initial host for the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic.
Peter Parks/AFP via Getty Images
The World Health Organization is asking Chinese officials to release data that may show a link between raccoon dogs and the coronavirus. That left many wondering — what is a raccoon dog, anyway?
First, here’s why we’re talking about them. They were being sold at a seafood and meat market in Wuhan, China, where researchers found evidence of the coronavirus in January 2020. Data that was briefly posted on, and then removed from, an international databaseappeared to show that genetic material from raccoon dogsshowed up in the same swabs as the virus that causes COVID, implying the…
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