(CNN) Satellite images of hospital parking lots in Wuhan as well as internet search trends, show the coronavirus may have been spreading in China as early as last August, according to a new study from Harvard Medical School. The study, which has not yet been peer-viewed, found a significantly higher number of cars in parking lots at five Wuhan hospitals in the late summer and fall of 2019 compared to a year earlier; and an uptick in searches of keywords associated with an infectious disease on China's Baidu search engine. Piecing together a complicated puzzleResearchers saw "a steep increase in volume starting in August 2019 and culminating with a peak in December 2019," the team, led by Boston Children's Hospital chief innovation officer John Brownstein, wrote in a preprint posted on Harvard's DASH server. Using images from October 2018, the researchers counted 171 cars in the parking lots at one of Wuhan's largest hospitals, Tianyou Hospital. Satellite data a year later showed 285 vehicles in the same lots, an increase of 67%, and as much as a 90% increase in traffic during the same time period at other Wuhan hospitals.

Source: CNN June 09, 2020 02:26 UTC