Reporter : Gu Fan
Editor: Higashino
Publisher : New Tang Dynasty Television
Translation, editing : Gan Yung Chyan
/ KUCINTA SETIA
Image : Comparison between Wuhan Tianyou Hospital's parking lot in October 2018 and October 2019. (Video screenshot)
According to the latest research from Harvard University, car traffic near Wuhan’s five major hospitals surged last fall, suggesting that covid may have existed and spread in Central China at that time, long before the media reported the outbreak.
John Brownstein, a medical professor who led the study at Harvard University, told ABC that they analyzed 350 commercial satellite images using technology similar to intelligence agencies and observed that from the late summer and early autumn of 2019 and found that near the five major hospitals in Wuhan traffic flow increased significantly.
Brownsden said that while car traffic is increasing, the number of Chinese Internet searches for symptoms of covid is also increasing.
Although Brownsden admits that the evidence is indirect, he said that the study has added new important data to uncover the mystery of the disease source.
Brownsden, Director of the Computational Epidemiology Laboratory at Boston Children's Hospital said, "Something happened in October. Obviously, before the beginning of the previously identified novel coronavirus outbreak, some degree of social fluctuation occurred."
Since the outbreak occurred in China last year, SARS-CoV-2 has swept the world, infecting 7 million people and causing 400,000 deaths. It is generally believed that the virus is transmitted from animals to humans. However, it is strange that scientists have not discovered the prevalence of covid in the animal kingdom. In humans, covid has become the most powerful natural killer since the outbreak of Spanish influenza 100 years ago.
ABC quoted sources as saying that CCP officials did not officially inform WHO of the spread of this new respiratory pathogen in Wuhan until 31 December 2019. The US intelligence agency had heard the news at the end of November and notified the Pentagon.
Because the source of the new virus is so difficult to determine, and so important to scientists, the whole world is racing to uncover the secrets of covid. However, because the Chinese government refused to cooperate fully with Western and international health authorities, this task became more complicated.
Brownsden and his team spent more than a month trying to find the earliest signs that Hubei people were suffering from covid.
The logic of the Brownsdon research project is simple: respiratory diseases will cause specific types of behavior in communities with outbreaks. Therefore, satellite images reflecting these behavioral patterns can suggest what happened.
"What we are trying to do is to observe the (hospital) activity and see how busy the hospital is." Brownsden said, "Our way is to count the cars at hospitals. When the hospital is busy, the parking lot is full. So the more cars, the busier the hospital, it may be because something happened in the community, the infection is increasing, people need to see a doctor. So you see the increase in hospital business through the number of cars. We have seen this in many hospitals."
Brownston said that their data, along with more and more information, points to what happened in Wuhan. He said that a lot of research is still needed to fully uncover the truth and let people really understand how the epidemic broke out. Their research is just one piece of evidence.
Disease ecologist and Peter Daszak, chairman of the Manhattan Eco-Health Alliance, said Harvard’s research was “very good”.
Daszak commented, "As to where the virus came from and when it appeared, you need to study every possible piece of evidence."
Brownsden's organization is dedicated to studying the source of emerging diseases. In the past, when they did the analysis after the outbreak, they always found that a disease had already spread among the people in the days, weeks, months, and years before the outbreak. Daszak believes that Brownsden's search will apply to covid.
The Harvard study
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