While there is still debate over where and when the deadly coronavirus originated, a new study by Harvard Medical School says the virus might have been spreading in China as early as August last year.
The study made the remark?based on satellite images of hospital travel patterns and search engine data made, but China dismissed the report as ¡°ridiculous¡±.
The research used satellite imagery of hospital parking lots in Wuhan - where the disease was first identified in late 2019 - and data for symptom-related queries on search engines for things such as ¡°cough¡± and ¡°diarrhoea¡±.
¡°Increased hospital traffic and symptom search data in Wuhan preceded the documented start of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in December 2019,¡± according to the research.
¡°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 Wuhan).¡±
It comes after another study conducted by scientists at University College London¡¯s Genetics Institutehad revealed that the coronavirus began spreading in China in December of 2019.
A genetic study of samples from more than 7,500 people infected with COVID-19 had suggested the new coronavirus spread quickly around the world after it emerged in China sometime between October and December last year, it revealed.
¡°Phylogenetic estimates support that the COVID-2 pandemic started sometime around Oct. 6, 2019 to Dec. 11, 2019, which corresponds to the time of the host jump into humans,¡± the research team, co-led by Francois Balloux, wrote in a study published in the journal Infection, Genetics and Evolution.?
China, however, has quashed all such claims, and said that the virus first originated in late December. China has also said it began updating the WHO on a regular basis on January 3 and that the head of China's Centre for Disease Control and Prevention briefed the head of the US CDC on January 4.
The reliability of China's data has also come into question. In March,?media reports on unpublished Chinese government data revealed that the first case of someone suffering from COVID-19 can be traced back to 17 November.
The report, in the South China Morning Post, said Chinese authorities had identified at least 266 people who contracted the virus last year and who came under medical surveillance, and the earliest case was 17 November ¨C weeks before authorities announced the emergence of the new virus.
The whole debate is rumbling on, and there seem to be no sure shot answers.