"the 41 earliest cases, including the first, had no connection to the animal market"
Were they connected to the lab?
"By Jan 2, 2020, 41 admitted hospital patients were identified as laboratory-confirmed 2019-nCoV infection in Wuhan." - from the source cited by the article. Those are not "the first who had it", they were identified hospitalised cases. It is guesswork how many people were infected at the time, but assuming ~ 10^3 in Wuhan at January 2nd 2020 seems likely.
Remember: France had cases in December, as did Italy:
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/04/french-hospita...
- https://smartwatermagazine.com/news/smart-water-magazine/stu...