Return to Ground Zero of Covid five years after the pandemic:

EL MUNDO was the first Spanish -language media to set foot in the Chinese city besieged by the coronavirus and now returns to the scene of the catastrophe.

The Huanan Market , identified as the ground zero of Covid , occupied the lower floor of a huge complex where, on the first floor, a small maze of glasses shops remains open.

"We reopened in mid-2020 , but the business has never been the same," says a vendor.

The prevailing theory among scientists all this time is that the virus originated in bats, jumped to another animal, and mutated in a way that later allowed it to spread among humans.

The first major focus of spread has always been located in the Huanan market, where animals susceptible to the virus were sold, such as raccoon dogs, which could have been the intermediate host before Covid passed to humans.

Wuhan will always bear the stigma of being the place where it all began.

The elderly man lying dead on the sidewalk was alone at home when he suddenly started feeling very ill and tried to walk to the hospital.

His wife, son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren were confined in another house.