Satellite footage of five hospitals in the Chinese city of Wuhan show dramatic spikes in vehicle traffic late last summer and early fall compared to the prior year, an indication that the coronavirus may have been spreading across the city months before it was reported to the World Health Organization, according to a Harvard Medical School study.
Researchers studying 350 commercial satellite images found nearly double the number of vehicles parked outside the health centers versus the same time in 2018, according to an ABC report on the study. Dr. John Brownstein, a Harvard medical professor who led the project, said the surge in traffic “coincided with” a spike in Chinese internet searches of “certain symptoms that would later be determined as closely associated with the novel coronavirus,” such as diarrhea and respiratory symptoms.
“Something was happening in October,” said Brownstein, the director of the medical center’s Computational Epidemiology Lab. “Clearly, there was some level of social disruption taking place well before what was previously identified as the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic.”
The Harvard report shows 112 cars parked outside of the Wuhan Tongji Medical University on Oct. 10, 2018, compared to 214 cars on Sept. 12, 2019. At the Wuhan Tianyou Hospital, 171 cars were documented outside on Oct. 10, 2018, compared to 285 cars on Oct. 17, 2019. At Hubei Women and Children Hospital, 393 cars were spotted Oct. 10, 2018. A year later, on Oct. 17, 2019, there were 714 cars parked.
The study also found massive declines in the amount of vehicular traffic in at least one public place. The Huanan Seafood Market parking lot was filled with 219 cars on Sept. 12, 2019, just as the hospitals were getting busier. By Feb. 4, 2020, as China grappled with the spread of the virus, only 10 cars were in the lot.
“What we’re trying to do is look at the activity — how busy a hospital is,” Brownstein said. “And the way we do that is by counting the cars that are at that hospital.”
Former acting Homeland Security Undersecretary John Cohen told ABC that the study raised questions about when the coronavirus first arrived in the United States.
“This study raises serious questions about whether the coronavirus was first introduced into the United States earlier than previously reported and whether measures announced in late January restricting travel from China were too little, too late,” said Cohen.
The U.S. has seen nearly 2 million confirmed cases since January. More than 7 million people worldwide have tested positive for the coronavirus, and 400,000 people have died.
