The narrative of China is under shelling as a scientist sends a bombshell saying that the coronavirus pandemic outbreak began mid-September, not December, with Wuhan as not the original epicenter.
In comparison to other assertions about the origin of the coronavirus, this digs deeper in the secrecy which the ruling party of China is involved in one of the controversial cover-ups in modern times.
Most notably, it takes a hard dig on the exact origin of the virus. As of this writing, the World Health Organization (WHO) says the virus is not from China. Many world leaders have been incensed by the declaration of the WHO as well.
Meet the study lead
The head of the study is Geneticist Peter Forster, from the U.K.'s University of Cambridge, in which the project is all about gleaning all the facts that led to horrific contagion called COVID-19. Its goal is to trace patient zero who got the first infection and from whom the virus settled into the COVID-19 disease.
They analyze the path of the virus, where it began, how it changed from host to host, and what are the changes in its symptoms. Next is to trace its transmission to other parts of the world.
Extant network analysis has been created to identify over 1,000 coronavirus genomes. The information includes infection date and what kind of coronavirus the patient had. A trio of coronavirus exists, with three types A, B, C that may be closest to the human genome. A type is the closest to the human genome, this was in Chinese and Americans, including mutated version found in Australia and the U.S.
There lies one exception, the Type A virus was different from the cases in Wuhan, China where the COVID-19 was found first. Most Wuhanese had the type B virus. Scientists making studies of virus genomes think that type B is a founder event the genome in Wuhan. Later a type C was identified in most early cases in Europe and South Korea and Hong Kong, Singapore but is not found in Mainland China.
Digging deeper into the coronavirus genome and gathering more data with his colleagues has pointed to the coronavirus outbreaks rise from September 13 and December 7. Forster said,"This assumes a constant mutation rate, which is admittedly unlikely to be the case, and the time estimate could, therefore, be wrong." he told Newsweek. "But it is the best assumption we can make now, pending analysis of further patient samples stored in hospitals during 2019."
More data was revealed to make the bombshell more shocking with the assertion that the outbreak did not start at Wuhan. Until the outbreak began on January 17 with most viral types that were type B. It gets more interesting as 500 miles from Wuhan, the province Guandong where 7 of the 11 were A viral types. He added, "These case numbers are small because few genomes are available for the early stage of the outbreak before the Chinese New Year travel pre-January 25 would have started mixing patterns up geographically."
This study has been published in PNAS on April 8. The first patient was tracked to November 17 according to the South China Morning Post, who is a 55-year old from Hubei (alleged patient zero).
Historically, it is presumed that humans got the virus by eating bats, and the first cases were traced to the seafood market in Wuhan. But, contrasting studies in the Lancet mentioned not all victims went to the Wuhan market.
