COVID May Have Started Sooner Than Thought

10th June 2020

COVID May Have Started Sooner Than Thought

Satellite images show spikes in auto traffic around hospitals in Wuhan last Fall (Getty Images)

The Claim

The COVID outbreak was active in Wuhan, China for four months before the Chinese government alerted the world to the situation.

News posted on

Emerging story

Harvard researchers claim satellite images show spikes in auto traffic around hospitals in Wuhan last fall. This may imply that the coronavirus had been spreading through central China as early as August -- four months before Beijing first reported the outbreak to the world.

Misbar’s Analysis

A Harvard Medical School study used techniques similar to those employed by intelligence agencies to break down commercial satellite imagery and saw abnormal increases outside five major Wuhan hospitals starting around late summer and early fall, John Brownstein, Ph.D., the Harvard Medical professor who led the research, told ABC News.

In one case, researchers counted 171 cars parked outside of Wuhan's Tianyou Hospital in October 2018. Satellite data from the same time a year later showed a 67 percent increase.

"Clearly, there was some level of social disruption taking place well before what was previously identified as the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic," Brownstein said.

Around the same time, there were also sharp increases in online searches for information on symptoms associated with the coronavirus, including "cough" and "diarrhea."

"I think it is ridiculous, incredibly ridiculous, to come up with his conclusion based on superficial observations such as traffic volume," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a press briefing on Tuesday.

In summary, the sources backing the claim is not nearly rigorous enough to make definitive conclusions.