Original link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/covid-pandemic-origin-wuhan-lab/2021/07/07/41fbbf9e-d560-11eb-b39f-05a2d776b1f4_story.html

In the search for the pandemic’s origin, the trail officially ends with Patient S01, China’s first confirmed covid-19 case, whose sparse details were outlined in the joint WHO-China report released in March.

"China's first," not the world's. Just right there, the implication is that it is known definitively that the virus originated in China and that there is no need to look further. Because, what if someone did look further? What might they find?

Meanwhile, in the cited WHO report:

3.3. Evidence for the early occurrence of SARS-CoV-2 from other studies

It remains to be determined where SARS-CoV-2 originated. Although the virus was first identified as the cause of a cluster of cases of severe pneumonia in Wuhan, to date it is uncertain from where the first cases originated. A few studies suggest that cases may have occurred before December 2019, the time when circulation of SARS-CoV-2 was thought to have started in Hubei Province. In a retrospective survey, sewage samples collected on 12 March 2019 in Barcelona, Spain, were positive for SARS-CoV2 RNA, but other samples collected between January 2018 and December 2019 were all negative. The PCR signals has not been confirmed by sequencing and could be false-positive signals.(43)

In Italy, the first known COVID-19 case was reported in the town of Codogno in the Lombardy region on 21 February 2020. Since then, a few studies have suggested evidence for earlier circulation. La Rosa and others (44) found the first positive sewage sample in northern Italy mid-December 2019, using a sewage testing protocol with nested PCR. In the same region, SARS-CoV-2 was detected by PCR in a throat swab from a child with suspected measles early in December.(45) Gianotti et al. (46) reported reactivity by in situ hybridization with a range of probes for SARS-CoV-2 in skin biopsies from a 25-year-old woman sampled in November 2019. She tested negative by PCR but in June 2020 was serologically positive. A serological survey among participants in a lung cancer screening programme described finding a few persons with neutralizing antibodies as early as October 2019.(46a)

In France, an oropharyngeal sample from a haemoptysis patient who was admitted to hospital on 27 December 2019 was identified positive by RT-PCR for SARS-CoV-2 RNA.(47) A separate, serological study found evidence for a significant increase in prevalence of neutralizing antibodies in mid-December, suggesting considerable earlier circulation of the virus.(47a) In Brazil, testing of sewage by RT-PCR yielded SARS-CoV-2-positive results in samples collected on 27 November 2019, much earlier than the first reported case in the Americas.(48, 49)

In the United States of America,

a serological survey of 7389 archived donated blood samples collected between 13 December 2019 and 17 January 2020 from nine states identified 106 positive samples, suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 might have been introduced into United States of America before the first identified case in the country.(50)

Collectively, these studies from different countries suggest that SARS-CoV-2 circulation preceded the initial detection of cases by several weeks. Some of the suspected positive samples were detected even earlier than the first case in Wuhan, suggesting that circulation of the virus in other regions had been missed. So far, however, the study findings were not confirmed, methods used were not standardized, and serological assays may suffer from non-specific signals. Nonetheless, it is important to investigate these potential early events.

Damn, it really seems like "the trail" might just have some paths that stretch beyond China's patient S01!