A new study published by Harvard Medical School (HMS) claims that the coronavirus may have been present in China since August last year, months before the country first reported the disease to the World Health Organization (WHO) in late December.
The new strain of the coronavirus, which causes Covid-19, is widely believed to have originated from a wet market in the city of Wuhan. Its presence was first made public in late December. The study conducted by HMS alleges that hundreds of people may have already contracted the disease months before that and authorities simply had no idea that they were dealing with a new type of strain.
HMS researchers had analyzed thousands of satellite images of parking areas around six major hospitals in Wuhan in the months leading to the reporting of the outbreak. What they found indicated that the number of vehicles in the parking areas had trended upwards starting in August 2019 before reaching a peak in December 2019. Analysts also studied search engine data from Chinese search giant Baidu between April 2017 and May 2020. They found that there was apparently a correlation to the spike in hospital visits to a spike in online searches for keywords such as "cough," "diarrhea," and "fever."
The research paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, claims that an increase in hospital traffic and online symptom searches indicate that the disease may have been present before its documentation in late December. Authors added that the spikes could very well be related to the emergence of the new virus and most of the evidence from other studies does point to a possible spread before the strain was identified.
The authors of the study argue that their findings do support the theory that the virus may have already spread to other areas outside of Wuhan even before it was documented and detected. It is also apparently possible that carriers may have brought the virus to other countries prior to its detection in late 2019.
The researchers' conclusions could fuel further criticisms against China's handling of the outbreak. Some countries have accused China of trying to play down the pandemic's effects on its population, while the US has outright accused the country of withholding critical information from the WHO.
US President Donald Trump previously stated that China's failure to report the disease in a timely manner had caused billions of dollars in losses and the loss of lives. China has outright denied the allegations, stating that it had acted swiftly in providing pertinent information about the disease to relevant international agencies.
