While research shows SARS-CoV-2 wasn't made in a lab, its emergence in the same city as the WIV has raised suspicions and inspired widespread speculation. Even if it evolved naturally, for example, a popular theory suggests the virus could have escaped after researchers collected it from the wild.

“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.

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

With genetic samples from the infamous Wuhan market, a new study makes the case that raccoon dogs are likely the animal that infected humans. Proponents of the lab leak theory are dubious.

It involved analysing millions of short fragments of genetic code – both DNA and RNA – to establish what animals and viruses were in the market in January 2020. "We are seeing

Genetic tracing at the Huanan Seafood Market supports hypothesis that the COVID pandemic spread from animals there.

A new peer-reviewed paper presents evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic started in a seafood market in Wuhan, China, where many of the first cases of the disease were identified. The paper, published Thursday in the scientific journal Cell,

Genetic testing on samples collected during the earliest days of the covid-19 outbreak suggests it is likely that the virus spread from animals to humans at the Huanan seafood market