The first case of the coronavirus likely appeared in China between early October and mid-November of last year, weeks before the first official case was reported in Wuhan in December, a new study from a university in the U.K. suggests.
University of Kent researchers approximated that the virus first emerged in the country around Nov. 17, 2019, and had spread around the world by January, Reuters reported.
The researchers used a mathematical model from conservation science usually used to estimate when a species might become extinct, according to ScienceAlert.com.
The first official case of COVID-19 was linked to a wild animal market in Wuhan, although many believe the pandemic could have started via a leak at a virology lab in the city.
COVID-19 GENE DATA REMOVED FROM NIH DATABASE ON CHINESE RESEARCHERS’ REQUEST
Some of the earliest cases in the city had no known link to the market, suggesting it may have originated somewhere else, Reuters reported.
The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center released a paper this week in which they recovered sequencing data from early Wuhan cases that it said showed the cases linked to the animal market were a variant of the original virus that had already spread to other parts of the country, according to Reuters.