Samples taken in the pandemic's early weeks reinforce hypothesis that coronavirus emerged from live animal market, not a laboratory, new study says.

A new genetic analysis looks at species of animals present at the Wuhan market that may have spread COVID-19 to people.

It is beyond “reasonable doubt” that the Covid-19 pandemic originated in a Chinese animal market, a new scientific study has found. Researchers from the United States and France discovered one stall in Wuhan, China, was a hotspot for coronavirus after analysing hundreds of genetic samples collected by Chinese authorities in 2020.

Genetic evidence from a new report suggests the coronavirus pandemic most likely spilled over from animals in the Wuhan market.

“It’s one of the most important data sets on the early pandemic and on the origin of SARS-CoV-2,” says Florence Débarre, an evolutionary biologist at the the French national research agency CNRS, and co-author of the Cell analysis.

A new study supports the theory that the coronavirus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic originated from Hunan Seafood Wholesale wet market in Wuhan, China.