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Re: Wuhan PRC
LONDON: COVID-19 might have been spreading in China as early as August last year, according to Harvard Medical School research based on satellite images of hospital travel patterns and search engine data.
The research used high-resolution satellite imagery of hospital parking lots in Wuhan - where the disease emerged 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."
READ: COVID-19 epidemics in
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