Coronavirus may been spreading in China since August indicates study

London, June 09: The coronavirus may be spreading in China as early as August 2019 according to a research by the Harvard Medical School based on the satellite images of hospital travel patterns.

The research used high resolution satellite imagery of the hospital parking lots in Wuhan, where the disease emerged in late 2019. Increased hospital traffic and symptom search data in Wuhan preceded the documented start of the SARS CoV2 pandemic in December 2019, the research said.

The research says that these findings also corroborate the hypothesis that the virus emerged naturally in southern China and was potentially already circulating at the time of the Wuhan cluster. The research also said, "in August, we identify a unique increase in the searches for diarrhoea which was neither seen in the previous fly seasons or mirrored in the coup search data."