The World Health Organization has called on China to release new data linking the Covid pandemic’s origins to animal samples at Wuhan Market after the country recently took down the research.

According to the WHO, China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention uploaded data to the public virus tracking database GISAID in late January relating to samples taken at the Huanan market in Wuhan in 2020.

Researchers from several countries downloaded and analyzed the data before it was removed, and presented their findings to the WHO last weekend. The researchers found molecular evidence that raccoon dogs and other animals susceptible to Covid were sold at the market, which is consistent with hypotheses about the virus spilling into humans from a wild animal.

Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s Covid-19 technical lead said that while the new data doesn’t provide a conclusive answer to how the pandemic began, “it does provide more clues.”

She also called on China to publicly release the data so the WHO and other researchers can further analyze it and inch closer to understanding the origins of a pandemic that has killed millions of people worldwide.

“The big issue right now is that this data exists and that it is not readily available to the international community. This is first and foremost absolutely critical, not to mention that it should have been made available years earlier, but that data needs to be made accessible to individuals who can access it, who can analyze it and who can discuss it with each other.”