COVID-19’s first known case was a vendor from Wuhan wet market, Arizona scientist says, disputing WHO report

An Arizona-based scientist believes the first known case of COVID-19 was from a vendor at a Wuhan wet market and not an accountant who reported symptoms much later and lived miles away from the market.  

The study by Dr. Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona, was published Thursday in the journal Science. The new study comes amid swirling questions regarding the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, a topic that has bitterly divided the country for months.

Worobey based his conclusions on public records and reports of early COVID-19 cases in China. He determined that a vendor at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the first known patient to contract the disease and that half of the early cases were linked to the market.

"[T]he most early symptomatic cases were linked to Huanan Market — specifically, the western section where raccoon dogs were caged — [providing] strong evidence of a live-animal market origin of the pandemic," Worobey wrote in an abstract of the study.

In February 2020, Wuhan authorities said they had identified the first COVID patient as a male accountant who fell sick on Dec. 8, 2019, and had no link to the market. And earlier this year, the WHO visited China and interviewed the accountant whom they described in March 2021 as the first known case.