First Covid-19 case emerged in China in October 2019: Study

The study suggested a much earlier and more rapid spread of Covid-19 than is evident from the confirmed cases.

SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes the coronavirus disease or Covid-19, emerged in China between early October and mid-November, prior to the officially accepted timeline of early December 2019, a new study has revealed. "Results infer that SARS-CoV-2 emerged in China in early October to mid-November, and by January, had spread globally," a study by researchers of Britain's University of Kent said. "The model suggests a likely timing of the first case of COVID-19 in China as November 17," the research paper that was published in the PLOS Pathogens journal said.

People wearing face masks walk on a street market, following an outbreak of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. (REUTERS)

The study suggested a much earlier and more rapid spread of the contagion than is evident from the confirmed cases. This comes after a scientific paper released on Wednesday revealed that over a dozen of coronavirus test sequences that were obtained during the early months of the pandemic were deleted from an international database used to track the evolution of the virus.

The report was authored by Jesse Bloom, a virologist and evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

Critics reiterated that the deletion of the data from the international database shows China's further attempt to cover up the origin of Covid-19. "Why would scientists ask international databases to delete key data that informs us about how Covid-19 began in Wuhan?" asked Alina Chan, a researcher with Harvard's Broad Institute, on Twitter. "That's the question you can answer for yourselves," Chan added.

The first official case of Covid-19 in China was recorded to have occurred in December 2019 and was linked to Wuhan's Huanan seafood market. However, some early cases had shown no known connection with Huanan, implying that the virus was already circulating before it reached the market.

The data in the report by Bloom showed that 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 circulation earlier and spread to other parts of China.

Moreover, a joint study published by China and the World Health Organization (WHO) in March-end also acknowledged that there could have been sporadic human infections prior to the Wuhan outbreak in December 2019.

(With inputs from Reuters)