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.
The study stated, “Increased hospital traffic and symptom search data in Wuhan preceded the documented start of the pandemic in December 2019. While we cannot confirm if the increased volume was directly related to the new virus, our evidence supports other recent work showing that emergence happened before identification at the Huanan seafood market … In August, we identify a unique increase in searches for diarrhea which was neither seen in previous flu seasons or mirrored in the cough search data.”
“The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lists both a cough and diarrhea as potential symptoms of Covid-19,” CNBC reported.
The study continued, “This symptom search increase is then followed by a rise in hospital parking lot traffic in October and November, as well as a rise in searches for cough. While we cannot conclude the reason for this increase, we hypothesize that broad community transmission may have led to more acute cases requiring medical attention, resulting in higher viral loads and worse symptoms.”
PJ Media noted in April, “According to unpublished, unconfirmed Chinese government reports seen by the South China Morning Post, the first recorded case of the coronavirus dates to November 17, 2019, weeks before The Lancet‘s claim that the first recorded case came on December 1. By December 8, the SCMP documents recorded between 1 and 5 new cases. By December 27, the SCMP documents showed 181 confirmed cases, and a friend of coronavirus whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang recalled that his medical department first reported the new outbreak to the Wuhan Center for Disease Control on the 27th.”
In late May, the Chinese state-run Global Times reported that the virus did not originate in a seafood market in Wuhan, writing:
The Huanan seafood market is more like a victim of COVID-19 rather than the origin of the novel coronavirus, Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and member of the National Committee of the 13th Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, told the media on Monday.
Gao said he had gone to Wuhan to collect samples for COVID-19 researchers in early January, but no viruses were detected in the animal samples. Viruses were only found in environmental samples, including sewage.
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