In 2003, it exploded out of a “wet market” in Guangdon where civet cats, raccoon dogs and multitudes of other animals were caged together in tight, squalid conditions. Such “wet markets” are widespread in China, providing a newly-affluent upper class with status-enhancing exotic animals to serve at dinner. The Chinese government shut down wet markets after the SARS outbreak, but that ban was short-lived. With SARS, the virus came initially from bats and then was passed, apparently, to civet cats and eventually to humans. Caging different wild beasts together by the hundreds or thousands, as in a wet market, can produce a particularly dangerous environment for infectious diseases like coronaviruses.

Source: Los Angeles Times January 26, 2020 10:52 UTC