Galaxy clusters are prime candidate sites to search for gamma-ray emission either from cosmic-ray interactions and/or dark matter annihilation. Despite extensive searches no gamma-ray emission could be traced to any galaxy cluster. Recently claims of extended gamma-ray emission found in the Fermi LAT data from the Virgo galaxy cluster were reported by Han et al. They attributed the putative gamma-ray emission to dark matter annihilation.
In more recent works by the same authors and Marcias-Ramirez et al a high number of newly identified point sources was suggested to explain the “extended” gamma-ray excess. Here we present a detailed study of the Virgo region conducted by the Fermi collaboration. We show that the excess can be described by either an extended source offset from the Virgo galaxy cluster center or by a high number of point sources inside or in the vicinity of the extended source. We compare both scenarios and investigate which one yield the more plausible explanation.