Experts from the World Health Organization predict that the coronavirus appeared in China long before the official announcement of its outbreak in December 2019, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Specialists say that in October of 2019, up to 90 people with coronavirus-like symptoms got hospitalized in central China.
According to Peter Ben Embarek, the head of the WHO expert group, further research is needed.
Chinese authorities say two-thirds of these people have been tested for coronavirus antibodies but have found no signs of the virus. The WHO experts believe that the antibodies in the patients were already minimized during the tests, and they could not be detected in the laboratory.
Experts from the World Health Organization have called on the Chinese authorities to conduct a massive study of blood samples of the Hubei Province population in 2019 to determine the exact time of coronavirus outbreak based on facts.
