Scientists from China stated that the spread of COVID-19 in the United States could begin back in September 2019, that is, earlier than in the PRC. Such a new version is announced in the study published on the CHINAXIV portal.
Group of specialists from China with the help of a mathematical model called a possible date for the start of the proliferation of coronavirus in the United States and China, using data on the number of confirmed infection cases.
The study is based on the analysis of data from 12 representative regions of the United States selected to determine the date of the first case of infection. “With a 50 percent probability, the first case of infection occurred from August to October 2019,” the report says. As scientists indicated, this is much earlier than the officially announced date of the first confirmed case in the United States – January 20, 2020.
According to scientists, the results of the study show that with a large share of probability, Coronavirus began to spread in the States in September 2019. At the same time, experts emphasize that the spread of coronavirus in China itself probably began only at the end of December 2019.
Earlier, The Telegraph reported that researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology planned to release modified coronaviruses in the volatile mice population in 2018. For these studies, experts asked $ 14 million from the American Agency for Promising Research Projects in Defense.