The study suggested a much earlier and faster propagation from Covid-19 which is evident from confirmed cases.
SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes Coronavirus disease or Covid-19, emerged in China between early October and mid-November, before the official timeline officially accepted from early December 2019, a New study “Infreen results that SARS-COV-2 emerged in China at the beginning of October in mid-November, and in January, it had spread worldwide,” said a study by researchers at Kent University of Kent of Great Britain. “The model suggests a probable moment of the first case of Covid-19 in China as of November 17,” said the research document published in the magazine Plos Patogens.
The study suggested a much earlier and faster spread of contagion that is evident from confirmed cases. This comes after a scientific document was published on Wednesday that revealed that during a dozen Coronavirus test sequences that were obtained during the first months of the pandemic, they were eliminated from an international database used to track the evolution of the virus.
The report was authorized by Jesse Bloom, Virologist and Evolutionary Biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
Critics reiterated that the elimination of data from the international database shows an additional attempt by China to cover the origin of Covid-19. “Why did scientists ask for international databases to eliminate the key data that they inform us about how Covid-19 began in Wuhan?” Alina Chan asked, researcher with the spacious Harvard Institute, on Twitter. “That’s the question you can answer for yourselves,” Chan added.
The first official case of Covid-19 was recorded in China, which was recorded in December 2019 and was linked to the Huanan seafood market of Wuhan. However, some early cases had not shown a known connection with Huanan, which implies that the virus was already circulating before it arrived at the market.
The data in the Bloom report showed that the samples taken from the seafood market were “not representative” of SARS-COV-2 as a whole and were a variant of the progenitor sequence that was in previous circulation and extended to other parts from China.
In addition, a joint study published by China and the World Health Organization (WHO) in March also recognized that there could have been sporadic human infections before the Wuhan outbreak in December 2019.