Posted 3 years ago
In January the World Health Organization sent an international team to China to investigate the virus' origins and when it started circulating. Based on their findings it is looking more likely that coronavirus was spreading globally months before the first cases in a Wuhan market captured global attention last December.
The team assessed medical records from more than 230 clinics across Hubei - the province where Wuhan is located/ The found that 90+ people were hospitalized with pneumonia or coronavirus-like symptoms in October and November 2019. These findings have led to a belief that people were getting sick months before the virus hit the world stage. And in fact maybe started circulating as early as late summer
This finding lends credence to other research from China that shows people were getting sick in Wuhan in November and early December. One analysis, based on satellite images of Wuhan hospitals and online searches for COVID-19 symptoms in the area, suggested the virus may have started circulating there as early as late summer.
Offical government records, in China, show China's first coronavirus case happened on November 17, 2019. Wuhan public-health officials initially told the WHO about a mysterious illness that would later be named the novel coronavirus on December 31, 2019.
Among the 41 coronavirus cases, Wuhan first reported, many were people who visited or worked at the city's Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.
But according to an April report, 13 of the 41 original cases had no link to the market - which suggests the market wasn't the origin site of the pandemic.
The WHO team confirmed the virus didn't make its initial jump from animals to humans at the Huanan market. Evidence suggests the virus was circulating elsewhere in Wuhan before the market outbreak happened, Liang Wannian, a member of China's National Health Commission who assisted with the WHO investigation, said in a press conference Tuesday.