The sharp increase in the number of cars in hospital parking lots in Wuhan in August 2019 may indicate an earlier spread of the coronavirus than Chinese authorities claim, according to the authors of a new study.
Scientists at Harvard Medical School analyzed satellite images of the parking lots of five hospitals in Wuhan, and discovered a sharp increase in the number of cars parked there from August to December 2019. It coincided with a sharp increase in Internet searches for the words “cough” and “diarrhea.
China called the study absurd, saying the authors based their report on a superficial analysis of information. The coronavirus outbreak in China is believed to have started in November last year. On December 31, 2019, Chinese authorities notified the World Health Organization (WHO) of numerous cases of pneumonia of unknown origin.
“It is clear that many were concerned long before the Covid-19 outbreak was announced,” said John Brownstein, author of the ABC study. The study has not yet been peer reviewed.
Scientists analyzed images of five hospital parking lots in Wuhan taken by a commercial satellite in the spring and summer of 2019, and compared them to images from a similar period a year earlier. In one of these photos, experts counted 171 cars parked in the parking lot of one of Wuhan’s largest hospitals in October 2018. One year later, in the same parking lot, the number of cars increased to 285, a 67% increase over the previous year. The surge in searches related to coronavirus symptoms on the Chinese search engine Baidu appears to have occurred at the same time.
“More and more information suggests that something was happening in Wuhan at the time,” said John Brownstein, the study’s author, according to ABC News.
Scientists at Harvard Medical School analyzed satellite images of parking lots at five hospitals in Wuhan, and found a sharp increase in traffic from August to December 2019. “It will take a lot of research to understand what really happened and how diseases like this arise and spread. This is just one more piece of evidence,” added John Brownstein. Hua Chunying, a representative of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, sharply criticized the study’s findings.
Satellite Images. Top row – photos of the Tyanu Hospital parking lot: October 2018 (A), October 2019 (B), and February 2020 (C). Bottom row – photos of the seafood market in September 2019 (D) and February 2020 (F). Red dots – cars. The BBC’s Beijing correspondent, John Sadowitz, notes that the researchers had limited data to work with: they were not always able to compare parking lot images taken in different years because of cloudy weather. But if the infection did exist, albeit undetected by the authorities, some Wuhan residents would have traveled abroad and spread the infection. And according to the data we have, the earlier emergence of coronavirus cases in other parts of the world suggests just that,” adds John Sadoworth.
And yet it would be unfair to accuse China of hiding or delaying information about the infection, says the BBC correspondent, because before the authorities know about an outbreak of a previously unknown disease, it can spread unnoticed for some time.
Late last year, the Chinese authorities informed WHO of a large number of unexplained cases of pneumonia. Nine days after Beijing notified WHO of an outbreak of pneumonia of unknown origin, Chinese authorities discovered a new coronavirus by analyzing several cases of pneumonia. It was subsequently named Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. On January 23, a strict quarantine was imposed in Wuhan and other Chinese cities. A week later, the WHO declared a state of emergency when it became known that there were 82 cases of the disease outside of China.
Helen Briggs, BBC health correspondent. Even six months later, it is impossible to determine exactly the chain of events that preceded the spread of the pandemic. What is known is that the first cases of the disease, discovered in December 2019, were linked to a local market in Wuhan where domestic and wild animals and their meat were sold.
The source of the epidemic is believed to be the market in Wuhan, where wild animals were sold. The test results indicate that the virus was present in some form, but not all cases of illness were linked to the market. It is also unclear which animal infected the person. Since then, data has emerged suggesting that the virus may have started spreading much earlier than previously thought. A French doctor claimed to have diagnosed coronavirus in one of his patients in late December. And here’s a new intriguing detail, not from clinical research, but from studying satellite images and Internet searches, that the number of cars in hospital parking lots in Wuhan spiked in late summer – early fall, as did the number of searches for symptoms of the coronavirus. Only further research on the virus – both in animals and humans – will answer the questions about Covid-19. But we may never know for sure where and when it originated.