The explosion of COVID-19 around the world had a longer fuse than early indications suggested, according to a new study published in the journal Science. “That [seafood market in Wuhan] was definitely connected to a lot of the early cases, but it’s now clear that the epidemic started well before that,” said researcher Michael Worobey. “Rather than being the source of early infections from animals to humans in that market, it was probably really a human-to-human amplifier of outbreak.”