"All the work that has been done on the virus and trying to identify its origin continue to point towards a natural reservoir of this virus and similar viruses in bat population.
But since Wuhan is not a city or an environment close to these bat environments, a direct jump from bats to the city of Wuhan is not very likely. Therefore we have tried to find what other animal species were introduced and moving in and out of the city that could have potentially introduced or contributed to introduce the virus in particular in the Huanan Market."
"There was also a large amount of testing for the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19 in many different animal species throughout the country in a large number of samples of both domestic animals, farmed animals, wild animals in many different provinces. Through these studies it has not been possible to pinpoint any animal species as a potential reservoir for this disease and they indicate that currently and also back in 2019 it doesn’t look like there was wide circulation of the virus in any animal species in the country"
"However, the findings suggest that the laboratory incident hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain introduction of the virus into the human population and therefore is not a hypothesis that will imply to suggest future studies into our work to support our future work into the understanding of the origin of the virus."
MF Any additional comment from Professor Liang?
LW I would like to offer additional comment. First, according to the current research conclusion of this joint research team, Huanan Market may not be the first place that had the outbreak and it is not the place that witnessed the earliest case either, as it was also introduced by Dr Peter. The onset date of the earliest case in this joint research was December 8, 2019. Also, the earliest confirmed case that has association with Huanan Seafood Market was December 12. Actually, according to our research from the epidemiological group, the case with the onset date on December 8 and actually have no relationship or association either with Huanan Seafood Market.
https://www.who.int/multi-media/details/who-media-briefing-from-wuhan-on-covid-19-mission---9-february-2021