Satellite data suggests coronavirus may have hit China earlier: Harvard Researchers say surge in cars at hospitals may indicate outbreak in fall + some FluTrackers support data

[Emily]

https://abcnews.go.com/International/satellite-data-suggests-coronavirus-hit-china-earlier-researchers/story?id=71123270

Satellite data suggests coronavirus may have hit China earlier: Researchers
Researchers say surge in cars at hospitals may indicate outbreak in fall.
By Kaitlyn Folmer and Josh Margolin
June 8, 2020, 3:04 AM
16 min read
Dramatic spikes in auto traffic around major hospitals in Wuhan last fall suggest the novel coronavirus may have been present and spreading through central China long before the outbreak was first reported to the world, according to a new Harvard Medical School study.

Using techniques similar to those employed by intelligence agencies, the research team behind the study analyzed commercial satellite imagery and "observed a dramatic increase in hospital traffic outside five major Wuhan hospitals beginning late summer and early fall 2019," according to Dr. John Brownstein, the Harvard Medical professor who led the research...

[Pathfinder]

Analysis of hospital traffic and search engine data in Wuhan China indicates early disease activity in the Fall of 2019


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Satellite_Images_Baidu_COVID19_manuscript_preprin t.pdf (509.6Kb)Author

Nsoesie, Elaine Okanyene
Rader, Benjamin
Barnoon, Yiyao L.
Goodwin, Lauren
Brownstein, JohnMetadata

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Nsoesie, Elaine Okanyene, Benjamin Rader, Yiyao L. Barnoon, Lauren Goodwin, and John S. Brownstein. Analysis of hospital traffic and search engine data in Wuhan China indicates early disease activity in the Fall of 2019 (2020).Abstract

The global COVID-19 pandemic was originally linked to a zoonotic spillover event in Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Market in November or December of 2019. However, recent evidence suggests that the virus may have already been circulating at the time of the outbreak. Here we use previously validated data streams - satellite imagery of hospital parking lots and Baidu search queries of disease related terms - to investigate this possibility. We observe an upward trend in hospital traffic and search volume beginning in late Summer and early Fall 2019. While queries of the respiratory symptom “cough” show seasonal fluctuations coinciding with yearly influenza seasons, “diarrhea” is a more COVID-19 specific symptom and only shows an association with the current epidemic. The increase of both signals precede the documented start of the COVID-19 pandemic in December, highlighting the value of novel digital sources for surveillance of emerging pathogensTerms of Use

This article is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Open Access Policy Articles, as set forth at http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.Ins...rms-of-use#OAPCitable link to this page

http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:42669767

https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/42669767

[Emily]

Thank you, Pathfinder!

[sharon sanders]

Looking at articles that we collected in the same time frame mentioned in the paper above:

"In August, we identify a unique increase in searches for diarrhea which was neither seen in previous flu seasons or mirrored in the cough search data."

Corresponding articles on FluTrackers:

China - Major hospitals seeing small outpatient peak in several disease areas - Jiangcheng district, Wuhan, Hubei province - July 10, 2019

China - 2000 children admitted each day to Wuhan Children's Hospital - 30% are respiratory fever related due air conditioning, Hubei province - August 9, 2019

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Please see this thread for posts about respiratory/pneumonia events in some cities along the Yangtze river and in proximity to Wuhan posted in the fall of 2019:

https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum/...092#post838092

[bertrand789]

"with nearly 10,000 athletes from over 100 countries competing in 27 sports."
...

"Host nation China sent a delegation consisting of 553 participants for the games, which marked the record number of participants to represent a nation at a single Military World Games.^[10] Around 230,000 volunteers were recruited for the event to be staged in China."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Military_World_Games

Les m?decins militaires des 100 pays ont des choses ? dire, maintenant, il me semble ... Quant ? l'O.M.S, ces militaires ont l'?tat de sant? pour ?tre plus facilement porteur sain que la population g?n?rale, de mon point de vue ...

[sharon sanders]

The paper is getting a lot of attention. Some of it is very critical - something like "cars in a parking lot doesn't tell us anything". Too bad healthmap never mentions anything about us because in this case we actually provide some support for their data with articles posted in that time frame.

Screen shot taken tonight with FluTrackers twitter account:

[sharon sanders]

China government comment on the paper:

snip

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying, asked about the research at a news briefing on Tuesday, said: “I think it is ridiculous, incredibly ridiculous, to come up with this conclusion based on superficial observations such as traffic volume.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-h...-idUSKBN23G0OM

[bertrand789]

“While we cannot confirm if the increased volume was directly related to the new virus, our evidence supports other recent work showing that emergence happened before identification at the Huanan Seafood market (in Wuhan),” they said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-h...-idUSKBN23G0OM