The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic

• Published in: Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 377; no. 6609; pp. 951 - 959
• Main Authors: Worobey, Michael, Levy, Joshua I., Malpica Serrano, Lorena, Crits-Christoph, Alexander, Pekar, Jonathan E., Goldstein, Stephen A., Rasmussen, Angela L., Kraemer, Moritz U. G., Newman, Chris, Koopmans, Marion P. G., Suchard, Marc A., Wertheim, Joel O., Lemey, Philippe, Robertson, David L., Garry, Robert F., Holmes, Edward C., Rambaut, Andrew, Andersen, Kristian G.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States The American Association for the Advancement of Science 26.08.2022; American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Subjects: Animals; China - epidemiology; Coronavirus; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; COVID-19 - epidemiology; COVID-19 - transmission; COVID-19 - virology; Epidemiology; Humans; Pandemics; SARS-CoV-2 - isolation & purification; Seafood; Seafood - virology; Viral Zoonoses - epidemiology; Viral Zoonoses - transmission; Viral Zoonoses - virology; Viruses; Wild animals; China; Wuhan China
• ISSN: 0036-8075; 1095-9203; 1095-9203
• DOI: 10.1126/science.abp8715

Understanding how severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged in 2019 is critical to preventing future zoonotic outbreaks before they become the next pandemic. The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, was identified as a likely source of cases in early reports, but later this conclusion became controversial. We show here that the earliest known COVID-19 cases from December 2019, including those without reported direct links, were geographically centered on this market. We report that live SARS-CoV-2–susceptible mammals were sold at the market in late 2019 and that within the market, SARS-CoV-2–positive environmental samples were spatially associated with vendors selling live mammals. Although there is insufficient evidence to define upstream events, and exact circumstances remain obscure, our analyses indicate that the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 occurred through the live wildlife trade in China and show that the Huanan market was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. As 2019 turned into 2020, a coronavirus spilled over from wild animals into people, sparking what has become one of the best documented pandemics to afflict humans. However, the origins of the pandemic in December 2019 are controversial. Worobey et al . amassed the variety of evidence from the City of Wuhan, China, where the first human infections were reported. These reports confirm that most of the earliest human cases centered around the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. Within the market, the data statistically located the earliest human cases to one section where vendors of live wild animals congregated and where virus-positive environmental samples concentrated. In a related report, Pekar et al . found that genomic diversity before February 2020 comprised two distinct viral lineages, A and B, which were the result of at least two separate cross-species transmission events into humans (see the Perspective by Jiang and Wang). The precise events surrounding virus spillover will always be clouded, but all of the circumstantial evidence so far points to more than one zoonotic event occurring in Huanan market in Wuhan, China, likely during November–December 2019. —CA Spatial distributions of early cases and environmental samples show that SARS-CoV-2 emergence was associated with the wildlife trade.