According to China media, on January 23, 2020 at a government briefing on the coronavirus outbreak the Director of the Chinese CDC, Gao Fu stated about the virus origin:
“We have confirmed it was transmitted via wild animals illegally sold at a seafood market in Wuhan.
At first, it was spread from animals to humans. However, the virus has since been mutating and has become adaptive to its host. Human-to-human transmission has occurred, and there has been some community transmission. That is to say, it has gone through three stages.”
No evidence is provided as to which specific zoonotic source, wild animal(s) that is.
In the weeks following this proclamation the media, public health and even scientists around the world used this claim to begin reporting about the threat of animal to human (zoonotic) diseases from seafood markets, such as Australia’s 60 Minutes.
On March 26, 2020 in a report the WHO were unable to identify the origin of the virus, only environmental samples taken at the seafood market were positive for SARS-CoV-2, no animal.
By mid-2021, after 18 months and almost 3 million viruses sequenced in Hubei, China and world wide, the WHO investigation were unable to find a single animal specimen with SARS-CoV-2. [@3:38] [1]