Beijing on Thursday criticised a preliminary study by U.S. researchers suggesting the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) may have been circulating in China since August 2019, calling it proof of a disinformation campaign.
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The new paper by researchers at Harvard and Boston universities analysed photos of parking lots at Wuhan hospitals and search trends on the Chinese search engine Baidu.
The team led by Elaine Nsoesie at Boston University said they found “a steep increase in volume starting in August 2019” at Wuhan hospital parking lots, “culminating with a peak in December 2019.”
The authors said that while they could not definitively confirm that the data they documented was linked to the virus, it supported conclusions reached by other research suggesting that the virus began circulating earlier than the first reported cases at the end of 2019.
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But China's Foreign Ministry criticised the paper as “full of holes” and “crudely manufactured.”
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Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she believed the study was evidence of coordinated efforts in the U.S. to “deliberately create and disseminate disinformation against China.”
“Some U.S. politicians and media acted like they found buried treasure and wantonly spread (the study), treating it like new proof that China concealed the epidemic,” Ms. Hua said.