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… new analysis of genetic samples from China appears to link the pandemic’s origin to raccoon dogs.

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“This isn’t an infected animal,” said Joel Wertheim, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, San Diego and a co-author of the report, referring to the new genetic data. “But this is the closest you can get without having the animal in front of you.”

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Frederic Bushman, a microbiologist at the University of Pennsylvania who also specializes in sequencing techniques, agreed that the report’s methods were sound.

“I think the simplest explanation is that it’s an infected raccoon dog,” he said. “I don’t think it’s absolute proof.”