summary - Report of the only international on-the-ground epidemiological mission to date (in-country 14 January-10 February 2021, after months of remote preparatory work). Reconstructs an epidemiological curve of the earliest identified cases and reports the mission’s market-investigation work (animal and product supplier tracing back from the market, serology on stored samples, retrospective case-finding through hospital records). The team rates “direct zoonotic spillover” as possible-to-likely, “spillover via an intermediate host” as likely-to-very-likely, “cold-chain/frozen-food introduction” as possible, and a “laboratory incident” as “extremely unlikely” — but the mission’s access was time-limited (roughly 4 weeks in-country) and negotiated, without independent access to raw hospital/laboratory records or the full case line list, a limitation acknowledged by several team members after the fact (this slice’s Reuters/Dwyer node) even though the report’s own prose is more measured about it.
relevance_note - The only field mission with any on-the-ground Chinese-government access; primary source for the earliest official epi-curve and market-tracing summary, but its own access limitations bear directly on scope note 2’s data-suppression question — cite the finding, not the report’s own confidence framing, per this slice’s brief.