How did COVID-19 start?

The disease appears to have originated from a Wuhan seafood market where wild animals, including marmots, birds, rabbits, bats and snakes, are traded illegally.

The hunt for the animal source of COVID-19 is still unknown, although there are some strong contenders.

A team of virologists at the Wuhan Institute for Virology released a detailed paper showing the new coronaviruses' genetic makeup is 96 percent identical to that of a coronavirus found in bats

A study published on March 26 argues that genetic sequences of coronavirus in pangolins are between 88.5 and 92.4 percent similar to the human virus.

Some early cases of COVID-19, however, appear to have inflicted people with no link to the Wuhan market at all, suggesting that the initial route of human infection may pre-date the market cases.