First-ever known case of Covid was a female seafood vendor at a Wuhan market

The first known case of COVID-19 was in a vendor at a live animal and seafood market in Wuhan, China - not someone who lived miles away, a new report claims.

Dr Michael Worobey, head of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona, says the World Health Organization (WHO) misconstrued the early timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He says he believes the first confirmed infection to be in a female seafood vendor at the Huanan Seafood Market who fell ill on December 11, 2019.

Previously, the earliest case of the virus was believed to have been a 41-year-old male accountant who lived 20 miles south of the market. 

The report is bound to reinvigorate  the debate about whether the COVID-19 pandemic started at the market or accidentally escaped from a laboratory in the same city. 

China first alerted the world to cases of COVID-19 when local authorities alerted the WHO to cases of  'pneumonia of unknown causes' on December 31, 2019.

Reports from Chinese officials said early cases were associated with the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which also sold live animals.

However, there has been much debate over whether the virus originated in animals or was manufactured in a lab. 

For the report, published in the journal Science, Worobey looked at early public records of the Covid pandemic's timeline.

This includes articles in medical journals and interviews with a Chinese news outlet with the people believed to have the first documented cases of the virus.

With several reports linking at least half of the earliest cases to the market, Worobey believes that pattern means that's where it started.

But the earliest known case was believed to be a 41-year-old male accountant, who lived 20 miles (30 kilometers) south of Huanan Market, with no connection to the place.

He first reported feeling ill on December 8 but did not come down with

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