“There was a conduit from Wuhan to the provinces where in South China, where the closest relative viruses to (the coronavirus) are found in bats,” says Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance. He says the wildlife trade seemed to be the most likely explanation of COVID-19 arriving in Wuhan, where the first human cases were detected last December.

That hypothesis, Daszak says, was “the one that's most strongly supported both on the WHO (and) the China side.”

Daszak and his co-authors are set to release a report, as early as next week, on the initial conclusions of their recent mission to Wuhan. They concluded it was “extremely unlikely” the pandemic was the result of a laboratory accident.

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