New Harvard research on when WUHAN Virus started (using satallite and Chinese Search engine metrics)
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/09/coronavirus-may-have-been-spreading-in-china-in-august-harvard-study.html
Covid-19 may have been circulating in China as early as August 2019, a new study from Harvard Medical School (HMS) claims.
The virus, which is widely believed to have originated in a wildlife market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, was first reported to the WHO in late December.
However, an analysis of hospital traffic and search engine data in Wuhan indicates that there was early disease activity in the fall of 2019, according to HMS researchers.
In a study published on Monday on Harvard University's DASH server, analysts used satellite images of parking lots at six hospitals in Wuhan to calculate vehicle counts and estimate hospital occupancy trends. The vehicle numbers were compared to trends seen during other flu-like illness outbreaks.
Here's the link to the Research Paper (not yet Peer Reviewed)
https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/42669767
Abstract
The global COVID-19 pandemic was originally linked to a zoonotic spillover event in Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Market in November or December of 2019. However, recent evidence suggests that the virus may have already been circulating at the time of the outbreak. Here we use previously validated data streams - satellite imagery of hospital parking lots and Baidu search queries of disease related terms - to investigate this possibility. We observe an upward trend in hospital traffic and search volume beginning in late Summer and early Fall 2019. While queries of the respiratory symptom “cough” show seasonal fluctuations coinciding with yearly influenza seasons, “diarrhea” is a more COVID-19 specific symptom and only shows an association with the current epidemic. The increase of both signals precede the documented start of the COVID-19 pandemic in December, highlighting the value of novel digital sources for surveillance of emerging pathogens