According to a new study from Harvard Medical School, Coronavirus was started spreading Wuhan, Chinain August. The study analyzed satellite images of hospital parking lots in Wuhan and internet search trends show the coronavirus spread.
The study led by Dr John Brownstein analyzed commercial satellite imagery found a significantly higher number of cars in parking lots at five Wuhan hospitals in the late summer and fall of 2019 compared to a year earlier; and an uptick in searches of keywords associated with an infectious disease on China’s Baidu search engine.
According to the study, the increase in vehicle volume coincided with a rise in queries on the Chinese search engine Baidu for “cough” and “diarrhoea”, about three weeks before the confirmed rise in coronavirus cases in early 2020. The researchers noted that while queries for cough coincided with the influenza season, diarrhoea is a symptom specific to Covid-19.
However, China’s foreign ministry rejected the study, calling it “extremely absurd”.
Covid-19, which was first detected in a cluster of cases associated with the Huaman seafood market in late December, has become an increasingly sensitive question as China fights off accusations that it should be blamed for the pandemic, which has killed more than 400,000 people around the world.
