Research by Harvard Medical School showed that the emerging corona virus may have spread to China in August of last year at the latest, based on satellite imagery of traffic and hospital traffic patterns and search engine data, but China described the report as absurd.
The research used satellite images of parking spaces in Wuhan, where the virus first appeared in late 2019, and online search data for symptoms associated with the disease, such as coughing and diarrhea.
"Increasing frequency on hospitals and looking for symptoms on search engines in Wuhan preceded the documented start of the SARS-Cove-2 pandemic in December 2019," the research says.
"These results also confirm the hypothesis that the virus appeared naturally in southern China and was already circulating at the time of the infection in Wuhan."
The research shows a significant increase in parking space for hospitals in August 2019.
"In August, we detected a unique increase in the data for diarrhea that was not detected in previous flu seasons or comparable to data on cough research," the research said.
In response to a question about the research, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying rejected the results of the research in a brief press statement yesterday.
"I think it is very absurd, it is very absurd," he said, "to reach this conclusion based on shallow observations, such as traffic volumes."
There is a hypothesis that the virus naturally appeared in southern China, and was already circulating at the time of the infection in Wuhan.