Coronaviruses are a large group of zoonotic (transmitted between animals and people) viruses that may cause illness in people and some occur in animals, including camels, civet cats and bats. Similar to other types of coronavirus, COVID-19 most likely lives in some animal reservoir. This means that the animals have been infected with it for quite some time passing back and forth much like a regular human cold. Recently this type of coronavirus made the jump to human hosts and that occurred in Wuhan, China. This is known as spillover; going from animal to human. This was most likely the result of a close interaction between the human population and the infected animal population.
The question we still have is which animal did it come from. It is believed to have originated in the market where there were many different types of animals being sold. Everything from seafood to bats were considered the “usual” assortment of food you would expect to find at a Chinese market. The Chinese government is actively trying to find the source animal reservoir in order to limit the amount of animal-to-human contact.
