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

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.

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

“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.