Explainer: What is a raccoon dog, and why missing Chinese samples have sparked frustration among those studying the coronavirus’s origins

He also demanded answers on why that data — briefly made available to international researchers earlier this year — is now missing. The data from the January 2020 samples was posted on GISAID in late January 2023, shortly before the Chinese research was released. One is that the samples were taken by Chinese researchers in early January 2020, but that data was only recently shared with the rest of the world. And until the data from the samples taken at Huanan market was uploaded in late January, they didn’t know those puzzle pieces existed. Scientists already knew from last year that there were samples from the Huanan market that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.