desan
President (40k+ posts)
In Wuhan, during December 2019, an inaugural cluster of cases displaying the symptoms of a "pneumonia of unknown cause" was linked to Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which had a thousand stalls selling fish, chickens, pheasants, bats, marmots, venomous snakes, spotted deer and the organs of rabbits and other wild animals (ye wei, bushmeat). The immediate hypothesis was that this was a novel coronavirus from an animal source (a zoonosis).
Coronaviruses mainly circulate among animals but have been known to evolve and infect humans as in the cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) together with four further coronaviruses that cause mild respiratory symptoms similar to the common cold. All coronaviruses known to infect humans have been shown to spread from human to human.
The natural wildlife reservoir of the 2019‐nCoV and intermediate host that transmitted the 2019-nCoV to humans has not been confirmed, and results of animal sampling from the market are not yet available. However, it is likely that the primary reservoir for the virus is bats.
2019–20 coronavirus outbreak - Wikipedia
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