Where and when did Coronavirus start?

Where and when did Coronavirus start?

The coronavirus pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus was first identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 and on the 31st of December 2019 China reported to the World Health Organization a cluster of viral pneumonia in Wuhan with cases of which the cause was not known.

The World health organization investigated and by the 30th of January 2020 the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January 2020, and officially a pandemic on the 11th of March.

Evidence showed that the most likely area in which the outbreak occurred was at the Huanan Seafood Market and that the origin of the virus was from another species of animal – also known as zoonotic transmission.

Early investigations determined that the virus that caused the outbreak, known as SARS-CoV-2, was a newly discovered virus and related closely to bat and pangolin coronaviruses. While there are those that speculate otherwise the general agreement in the scientific community is that the virus was a natural one which may have been transmitted to humans by bats that were being processed for traditional Chinese medicine.

The earliest known person with Coronavirus is unknown though several cases can be traced as far back as the 17th of November 2019.