Based on a Sankei Shimbun article, this essay examines how China’s previous claim that the novel coronavirus first originated at Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Market has begun to waver. It discusses analyses by Chinese government-affiliated institutions, a Lancet paper, and a paper suggesting the possibility of a leak from the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, highlighting the deepening mystery surrounding the virus’s origin.

April 21, 2020
The previous view held by the Chinese authorities is wavering.
This is because a government-affiliated institution has presented an analysis showing that the virus flowed into the market from another area.
It is said that one researcher was attacked by bats, with their blood adhering to his skin or their urine splashing onto his body, and that each time he voluntarily isolated himself for fourteen days.
This is a republication of a chapter I sent out on February 26 under that title.
The following is from an article I found a short while ago on the Sankei Shimbun website.
Where was the first source of the novel pneumonia?
The mystery deepens.
“It was not the seafood market,” analyzes a Chinese government-affiliated institution.
Beijing, by Yoshiaki Nishimi.
The first source of the novel coronavirus was wild animals traded at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China.
That previous view held by the Chinese authorities is now wavering.
This is because a government-affiliated institution has presented an analysis showing that the virus flowed into the market from another area.
However, there are few clues for determining where and how the “first infected person” emerged, and the mystery is deepening.
According to a paper published by February 26 by the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Yunnan Province and others, as a result of analyzing the genetic information of the novel coronavirus collected in twelve countries, including China, it was found that the virus detected at the Huanan Seafood Market had flowed in from another area.
The paper pointed out that, as early as late November, human-to-human infection may have begun in another location.
It then analyzed that a route of infection expansion centered on the market was subsequently formed.
This view is consistent with a paper published in January in the British medical journal The Lancet by doctors in Wuhan.
That paper pointed out that, among the forty-one initially confirmed infected persons, including the first patient who developed symptoms on December 1, fourteen had no connection with the market.
It also stated that bats, the natural host of the virus, were not traded at the market.
Where, then, is the source?
According to Hong Kong media and others, Professor Xiao Botao of South China University of Technology in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, pointed out in a paper posted on a site for researchers on the 6th of this month that the virus may have leaked from the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, located only 280 meters from the market.
According to the paper, the center captured more than 600 bats in Zhejiang Province and elsewhere for experiments.
It is said that one researcher was attacked by bats, with their blood adhering to his skin or their urine splashing onto his body, and that each time he voluntarily isolated himself for fourteen days.
The paper expressed the view that samples or contaminated garbage may have been the cause of the virus leak.
However, this paper was later deleted from the site.
On the 20th, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang stated, regarding theories that the virus “leaked from a laboratory” or “was developed as a biological weapon,” that “renowned experts around the world recognize that there is absolutely no scientific basis.”