Coronavirus outbreak may have started as early as September 2019

‘Based on the data Forster and his colleagues have collected, the coronavirus outbreak appears to have started between September 13 and December 7. “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 at the moment, pending analysis of further patient samples stored in hospitals during 2019”.’

Read here (Newsweek, April 17, 2020)

Related

• Cambridge researchers identify 3 variants of Covid-19, say their methods could be used to help identify undocumented infection sources. Read here
• First case of Covid-19, presumably Type A, occurred ‘no earlier than September 13, 2019 and no later than December 7, 2019’. View here

First case of Covid-19, presumably Type A, occurred ‘no earlier than September 13, 2019 and no later than December 7, 2019’

‘Peter Forster, a geneticist at the University of Cambridge, has identified three distinct strains of COVID-19. Forster and his team traced the origins of the epidemic by analysing 160 genomes from human patients and found that the strain in #Wuhan mutated from an earlier version.’

View here (CGTN, Youtube, April 11, 2020)

Cambridge researchers identify 3 variants of Covid-19, say their methods could be used to help identify undocumented infection sources

‘Researchers from Cambridge, UK, and Germany have reconstructed the early “evolutionary paths” of COVID-19 in humans – as infection spread from Wuhan out to Europe and North America – using genetic network techniques... ‘Study charts the “incipient supernova” of COVID-19 through genetic mutations as it spread from China and Asia to Australia, Europe and North America. Researchers say their methods could be used to help identify undocumented infection sources... The research revealed three distinct “variants” of COVID-19, consisting of clusters of closely related lineages, which they label “A”, “B” and “C”.’

Read here (Cambridge Research News, April 9, 2020)