The authors of the study say that they observed an upward trend in hospital traffic and search volume for disease-related terms beginning in late summer and early fall of 2019, implying that the virus may have already been circulating before the identification of the Huanan market cluster in Wuhan late November, early December.
China has maintained that there was no delay or cover-up in the Chinese government’s response to the outbreak of the disease and has rebutted all other accusations suggesting the virus may have originated from the lab, saying that it’s a “smear” campaign.
A new study carried out by researchers from the Harvard Medical School, Boston University of Public Health and Boston children’s hospital used satellite imagery of parking lots and disease-related search engine queries to investigate the possibility that coronavirus may have been circulating in Wuhan since August last year.
