Skip to content

Monday, May. 11, 2020

Have scientists ruled out a Wuhan market as a source of the coronavirus?

Remaya Campbell, Gigafact
no

Amid theories about the possible origins of the novel coronavirus, scientific attention continues to consider the role of a Wuhan, China, wet market. Contact histories of a first cluster of patients at a Wuhan hospital in January 2020 pointed to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market as a likely origin point. Much remains to be understood about the path the virus took before being identified in Wuhan, including whether there were other routes of infection along with or prior to the outbreak associated with the market.

It was not clear whether live animals or infected vendors or shoppers may have brought the virus into the market, a World Health Official told a May 8 Geneva news briefing.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.