A non-peer reviewed Harvard Medical School (HMS) study has posited it is possible the coronavirus COVID-19 first appeared in Wuhan, China, much earlier than November 2019, as previously supposed. The study opined that the virus, which was first reported to the WHO in late December 2019, may have appeared first in August 2019.
The study examined hospital traffic and search engine data in Wuhan, checking satellite images of parking lots at six hospitals in Wuhan against similar images from other time periods. Those patterns were compared to searches on the Chinese search engine Baidu for “cough” and “diarrhea,” between April 2017 and May 2020. The study also examined hospital occupancies and found that they increased from August 2019 to December 2019.
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