Where did Covid start?
SINCE the coronavirus pandemic began in 2019, it has claimed the lives of more than two million people across the globe.
Exactly how and where the deadly bug began have been under scrutiny for months as scientists and researchers look for answers.
Where did Covid start?
Although it is not yet known exactly where the outbreak first started, many early cases were in Wuhan, China - a city with a population of more than 11 million.
However in a report on February 8, 2021, the World Health Organisation rejected the idea that Covid began in a Wuhan wet market or was the result of a lab leak.
It was originally believed that the virus originated from a "wet market", where animals such as bats, snakes, rabbit and birds are illegally sold.
Humans as well as animals - both living and dead - are put together in close contact in wet markets in often unhygienic conditions.
As the coronavirus is known to be transferred from animals to humans, it is believed market stallholders, who came into contact with animals were the first people infected with the strain.
A 61-year-old frequent shopper at the wet market was the first person to die from the virus.
Shortly after the spread of the disease, officials in China imposed a nationwide ban on the buying and selling of wild animals in markets, restaurants and other retail places.
Although experts are yet to identify the source of the virus, bats are widely believed to be the original hosts.
How did Covid start?
Exactly how Covid started is still in question and under investigation.
Suggestions that the virus could have crossed to humans at the Huanan Seafood Market, or escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology were dismissed by WHO in a lengthy press conference on February 9, 2021.
WHO's findings appeared to largely back Communist Party protestations that the virus may have originated from outside of its borders.
It is a move which will only fuel allegations of "China-centric" bias against WHO.
WHO scientists appeared alongside their Chinese counterparts as they confirmed they have ruled out the Wuhan wet market as the virus' original origin and dismissed the lab leak as "extremely unlikely".
Instead the team offered explanations including a possible jump from animals to humans elsewhere, or even that it may have come from frozen food.
The team admitted the virus could have been circulating in other regions of China "several weeks" before it was identified at an outbreak at a wet market in Wuhan.
The US, however, has claimed it has explosive evidence that proves Covid-19 leaked from a Wuhan research lab.
Documents reveal scientists in Wuhan fell in with Covid-like symptoms in late 2019 - months before the pandemic began to ravage the world.
A study of coronavirus points to it originating in bats - but it is unlikely that they were in Wuhan.
While the natural cause was the prime investigation, WHO admitted before their final report that they were keeping an open mind of a theory of a lab leak.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology was known to be experimenting with chimeric viruses and holding bat-borne diseases - and its been suggested an accidental security breach could have led to the outbreak.
When was the first case of coronavirus discovered?
The first case of coronavirus was reported to WHO in December 2019.
A public health emergency of international concern was subsequently declared.
On January 31, 2020, the first two Covid cases were reported in the UK.
How far has Covid spread?
Covid has spread across the entire world.
The virus reached every continent when Antarctica recorded its first cases of the deadly bug in December 2020.
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It was the last of the world's seven continents to be affected by the disease after managing to avoid the pandemic up until then, when members of a Chilean research team were struck down with the virus.
Worldwide, a total of 2,338,302 people have died, with 107,077,257 cases reported.
As of February 9, 2021, Covid has claimed the lives of 112,798 people in the UK, with a total of 3,959,784 recorded.