summary - Reports the authors’ own field surveys of Wuhan’s live-animal markets conducted May 2017-November 2019 (i.e., entirely pre-pandemic): 47,381 individual animals across 38 species (31 of them protected/regulated under Chinese or international law) recorded for sale for meat, including at the Huanan market specifically, typically kept and slaughtered on-site under poor welfare/hygiene conditions. Documents that SARS-CoV-2-susceptible species including raccoon dogs and hog badgers were routinely sold live at Huanan. No pangolins or bats were recorded on sale at any surveyed market, which the authors note weakens pangolin/bat-specific vector hypotheses without bearing on a general live-wildlife-trade transmission route.
relevance_note - Establishes, from data collected before the pandemic existed as an issue, that the physical precondition for a market-based spillover (live SARS-CoV-2-susceptible wildlife routinely present) held at Huanan specifically — independent of any of the post-pandemic swab/case datasets.