A study published this week in CELL strongly suggests that the COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) cases first identified in China are linked to wild animal trading at Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.

In the Cell article, Débarre and colleagues from Sorbonne University, the University of Arizona, the Scripps Research Institute, and elsewhere described the use of reverse-transcription quantitative PCR, metagenomic sequencing, SARS-CoV-2 genome analyses, phylogenetics, and geospatial mapping to assess over 800 environmental samples collected by the Chinese CDC at the Huanan market on Jan. 1 and Jan. 12 of 2020, and samples collected in March 2020. – Source: Genome Web, Cell