Work has been initiated to pinpoint the initial source of infection of the new coronavirus. The source of the new coronavirus is still inconclusive, although scientists around the world are working hard to study and publish papers. It is not yet possible to trace exactly how the new coronavirus mutated and entered the human world, but in terms of infectious disease and epidemiology, the Wuhan South China Seafood Market is where it was conceived and initially spread. Recently, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Novel Coronavirus Infection Prevention and Control Technical Group developed an “Emergency Research Agenda for Novel Coronavirus-Infected Pneumonia Outbreak,” one of which is to search for the virus in farmers’ markets, continuously sequence the newly isolated virus to determine the evolution of the coronavirus, and update the break test accordingly. On December 29, 2019, a hospital in Wuhan reported an incident of a cluster of cases of severe pneumonia of unknown origin, the majority of patients with this unexplained pneumonia came from the South China Seafood Market. It was also from these cases that the virus spread nationwide. However, the source of transmission and intermediate hosts were unknown. Identifying the source and intermediate host of the novel coronavirus is critical to controlling novel coronavirus pneumonia at its source, but the source and intermediate host of the novel coronavirus has yet to be determined. Chinese experts have targeted the South China seafood market. Recently, the expert group on novel coronavirus pneumonia prevention and control of the Chinese Society of Preventive Medicine released an article titled “Reflections on countermeasures for the transition from the emergency response phase of the epidemic to the sustained prevention and control phase of the epidemic peak”, stating that the study found that the novel coronavirus is adjacent to the taxa of SARS virus and SARS-like virus in the evolutionary tree, and the common ancestor of the novel coronavirus and SARS and SAR-like coronavirus is an HKU9-1 coronavirus parasitic on fruit bats, it is speculated that the natural host of the novel coronavirus may be bats; the novel coronavirus utilizes the same cell entry receptor (ACE2) as the SARS coronavirus. The expert group found that the novel coronavirus had 96% sequence identity with a bat coronavirus, also suggesting that the novel coronavirus may have originated from bats. The CDC speculated that the source of the novel coronavirus may be wildlife based on the results of more than 500 specimens from the South China Seafood Market and other tests; in addition, it was also found that the sequence similarity between the strain isolated from the pangolin and the strain isolated from the currently infected population was as high as 99%, indicating that the pangolin may be a potential intermediate host for the novel coronavirus. It has been suggested that snakes may also be intermediate hosts for novel coronaviruses. A study comparing the infection pattern of all viruses in vertebrate hosts found that mink virus showed a closer infection pattern to novel coronaviruses. Whether mink and snake are intermediate hosts of novel coronaviruses is to be further confirmed. On January 26, the Institute of Virus Prevention and Control of the Chinese Center for Disease Control said that in the novel coronavirus traceability research has made progress in the stage, for the first time from 585 environmental samples of the Wuhan South China Seafood Market, 33 samples were detected containing novel coronavirus nucleic acid, and successfully isolated the virus in positive environmental specimens, suggesting that the virus originated from wild animals sold in the South China Seafood Market. Of these, 93.9% (31/33) of the positive specimens were distributed in the west area of the South China Seafood Market. There is wildlife trading in the western part of the market, especially in the western part of the seventh and eighth streets near the inner part of the market where there are several wildlife trading stores, and this area also has a high concentration of positive specimens, accounting for 42.4% (14/33) of all positive samples. “Most of the positive samples from the market were in wildlife trading stores, including snakes, mole species, and bamboo rats. There are two reasons why viruses are detected from these products, one is that the wild animals themselves carry the virus, and the other is that the virus from the wild animals with the virus contaminates other goods. Because the market is more chaotic, full of wild animal offal, this contamination will spread with the environment.” A person who did not want to be named revealed. According to a survey by First Financial, there are hundreds of merchants selling snakes in the South China Seafood Market, and if snakes carrying the new coronavirus are sold, human infection becomes natural. Content source: First Financial