The research showed a sharp increase in the numbers of vehicles in hospital car parks.
The novel coronavirus might have been spreading in China as early as August 2019, new research from Harvard Medical School has suggested.
The research is based on satellite images of hospital travel patterns and search engine data.
“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.
The research used a combination of high-resolution imagery of hospital car parks in Wuhan, where the virus was first reported late last year, and search engine data for symptoms related to Covid-19 such as “cough” and “diarrhoea”.
“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.
“These findings also corroborate the hypothesis that the virus emerged naturally in southern China and was potentially already circulating at the time of the Wuhan cluster,” according to the research.
The research showed a sharp increase in the numbers of vehicles in hospital car parks.
Around five major hospitals were tracked during the period of late summer to December 2019, all showing an increase in cars with vehicular movement peaking in September-October. But some even showed this rise in traffic as early as August.
The images showed up to a 90% increase in traffic in these car parks from the same period the year before.
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