Harvard University

---

The Corona-Virus outbreak was first seen in Wuhan, But it was circulating earlier than thought?

There is criticism of the study from the United States suggesting that the Corona could have a Virus in the Chinese city of Wuhan, in August of Last Year .

The study by Harvard University , was the by considerable publicity.

What is the research?

The research, which is peer-reviewed, is not based so far on satellite images of traffic movements to hospitals in Wuhan, and the tracking of online searches for certain types of medical symptoms.

It says that there is a noticeable increase in vehicles Parking outside of the six hospitals in The City from late August until 1. December 2019.

This coincided, says the Harvard report, with an increase in searches for possible coronavirus symptoms such as "cough" and "diarrhoea".

The researchers monitored Wuhan traffic patterns

This would also be an important finding, because the earliest case reported in Wuhan.

The scientists write: "While we confirm whether the increased volume was directly with the new virus, our evidence supports other recent work, indicate that emergence occurred prior to the identification of the Huanan seafood market. "

The Harvard study a lot of traction gained in the media, with President Trump, has been very critical appear on China's pandemic response, The tweet, More Than three million times.

So, your evidence stand up?

in The study, it is claimed, there was a rise in online requests for coronavirus symptoms, especially in "diarrhea" on the popular Chinese search engine Baidu.

But , Baidu company officials have disputed their findings, saying it was in fact a decline in searches for "diarrhea" in this period of time.

So, what is it?

The term, which is translated in the Harvard University paper indeed, from the Chinese as a "symptom " diarrhea".

We tested this on Baidu ' s tool that allows users to analyze the popularity of search queries like Google Trends .

The Search -term "symptom " diarrhea" actually show an increase in the requests of August 2019.

But , we also went to the term "diarrhea", a common term in Wuhan, and actually showed a decrease from August, 2019, until the outbreak began.

A lead author of the Harvard paper, Benjamin Rader, told The Bbc that "The Search term we chose for 'diarrhea' was chosen because it proposed The Best game for confirmed cases of Covid-19 and has, as a related search term to coronavirus".

We looked at the popularity of searches for "fever" and "difficulty breathing", two other common symptoms of coronavirus.

The Search for "fever" increased a small amount after August, a similar rate to "cough", and asks, "shortness of breath" decreased in the same period.

There were also questions of the study, with diarrhea as an indicator for the disease.

One of the almost 17,000 coronavirus patients found that diarrhea was the seventh most common symptom, which is far below The Top three: cough, fever and shortness of breath.

What is with The Number of cars?

in the six hospitals, the Harvard study reported an increase of cars in the hospital Parking, which is from August to December 2019.

However, we have found that some serious errors in your Analysis .

The researchers examined and annotated satellite images show, Wuhan hospitals

The Report States that images with trees and the building shadows were excluded in order to avoid over or under-counting vehicles.

released But , satellite images, the media show that is blocking large areas of the hospital, Parking the high-rise buildings, which means that it is not possible to accurately assess The Number of cars available.

In the tweet below, we have commented on with the white boxes are the areas covered by the tall buildings.

There is also a garage to the Tianyou hospital, which is visible on Baidu's street view function, But only the input in the view to satellite Imagery -The Cars , under the floor.

One of the authors of the study, Benjamin Rader, said: "we can definitely. not for the underground garage in each period of the study, and this is one of the limitations of this type of research"

There are also concerns about the selection of hospitals for the study.

Hubei women and children's hospital is one of the sites, which included, But children rarely need hospital treatment for coronavirus. In response, the authors say, their findings would be increased car Parking usage to show, still as a whole, even if this hospital were excluded from the survey.

The researchers were able to your data compared with hospitals in other Chinese cities, to see if the increase in traffic and searches that were specific to Wuhan, where the outbreak first came to light.

Without that comparison, in addition to The Questions we have raised about the online search for medical symptoms, The Evidence for Wuhan residents, which is a treatment for coronavirus in August of Last Year , fought to remain strong.

however, There is still a lot we don't know about the early spread of The Virus in Wuhan.

reality check, china

Source of news: bbc.com