a Sharp increase in the number of cars on the Parking lots of hospitals in Wuhan in August 2019 may indicate an earlier spread of the coronavirus, than claimed the Chinese authorities, according to the authors of a new study.
Scientists at Harvard medical school analyzed satellite images of Parking lots of five hospitals in Wuhan and found a sharp increase in the number of cars on the sites from August to December 2019.
It coincided with a sharp growth of search requests on the Internet with the words “cough” and “diarrhoea”.
it is believed that the coronavirus outbreak in China began in November last year. December 31, 2019, the Chinese authorities reported to the world health Organization (who) on numerous cases of pneumonia of unknown causes.
“Obviously, many people have started to worry long before it was announced that the flash Covid-19” — said Hey-bi-si study author John Brownstein.
the Study has not been peer evaluations.
the researchers analyzed images of Parking lots at five hospitals in Wuhan, taken by a commercial satellite during the spring and summer of 2019, and compared them to pictures of the same period a year earlier.
On one of these images, experts have counted 171 vehicles parked in the Parking lot of one of the largest hospitals of Wuhan in October 2018.
a Year later, on this same lot the number of cars has increased to 285, which is 67% more compared to the previous year.
a Surge of queries for keywords associated with symptoms of coronavirus in Chinese search engine Baidu, it seems, arose at the same time.
“Need a lot of research to understand what happened actually, and to learn how they arise and the spread of diseases like this. This is just one more proof,” added John Braunstein.
the Representative of the Chinese foreign Ministry, Hua chunin subjected to the results of the study criticized.
“This is outrageous, incredibly outrageous to come to that conclusion, relying on such superficial data as the congestion of the Parking lots,” said she.
Reporter bi-Bi-si in Beijing John sudworth place notes that the researchers could only work with limited data: they are not always able to compare the pictures of the Park, taken in different years, due cloudy weather.
And yet it would be unfair to accuse China of concealing or untimely reporting of the infection, says the correspondent of the Bi-bi-si, in fact, before the outbreak of a previously unknown disease the authorities find out, it can some time to spread unnoticed.
nine days after Beijing announced the who of an outbreak of pneumonia with unknown cause, the Chinese authorities have detected a new coronavirus, proanalizirovan�� a few cases of pneumonia. Subsequently, he was named Sars-CoV-2, is the virus that causes Covid-19.
on January 23 in Wuhan and other Chinese cities was introduced strict quarantine.
a Week later, the who declared the emergency situation when it became aware of 82 incidents of the disease outside China.
Helen Briggs, correspondent bi-Bi-si health.
it is Impossible to set the chain of events that preceded the spread of the pandemic, even six months later. It is known that the first cases discovered in December 2019, have been associated with the local market in Wuhan, where he sold domestic and wild animals and their meat.
the results of the tests indicate that the virus existed in some , but not all, cases have been associated with the market. It is not clear, and from any animal infected people.
Since there is evidence that the virus could begin to spread much earlier than previously thought. A French doctor claimed to have diagnosed with a coronavirus from a patient at the end of December.
And now there is a new intriguing detail, not obtained by clinical studies and by studying satellite images and searches on the Internet, according to which in Wuhan in the late summer — early autumn has sharply increased the number of cars in the Parking lots of hospitals and the number of searches that points to the symptoms of coronavirus.
Only further study of the virus in both animals and humans — will answer questions about Covid-19. Although we may never not know exactly when and where he appeared.
