Origins
Public health officials suspect that the current outbreak may have originated at a live-animal market in Wuhan, where dozens of workers were infected at the outset. The market has been shut down, but tests on samples from the area have been inconclusive. In early February, a group of Chinese scientists suggested that genetic analyses pointed to pangolins — scaly, long-snouted anteaters — as a likely source of the outbreak. Their research showed that genetic sequences of coronaviruses isolated from pangolins are 99 percent similar to those of the current variant.