Not November, Coronavirus may have hit China as early as August: Harvard satellite study

A new research on the origins of Coronavirus has suggested that the novel disease had been spreading through China, long before it was brought to the attention of the world. A study put forward by the Harvard Medical School has suggested that the Coronavirus outbreak could have hit China early fall in 2019. 

The research group from Harvard Medical School have concluded this based on the satellite images it studied which tracked the movement of vehicles along major hospitals in Wuhan. The satellite images show dramatic spikes of traffic in Wuhan hospitals starting from somewhere around September to mid-October. 

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"We observed a dramatic increase in hospital traffic outside five major Wuhan hospitals beginning late summer and early fall 2019," said Dr. John Brownstein, the Harvard Medical professor who led the research.

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The researches have stated that such a dramatic influx of vehicles into hospitals could only suggest that there was a sudden spike in some form of infection. Around five major hospitals were tracked during the period of late summer to December 2019, all showing an influx of cars and vehicular movement peaking in September-October. Some even showed this rise in traffic as early as August. 

From the approximately 350 satellite frames, researchers found 108 usable frames to study the parking lots and the roads around the hospitals. The images showed up to a 90% increase in traffic between fall of 2018 and 2019, highest car counts starting from September through December 2019 suggesting some form of community panic which was causing people to rush to hospitals. 

Since the outbreak in China last year, the coronavirus has swept across the globe infecting nearly 7 million and killing more than 400,000 worldwide, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University. 

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