Chinese Experts at Harvard Severely Criticize... "Succumbing to US Political Conspiracy"

[Asia Economy Beijing=Special Correspondent Park Sun-mi] Chinese experts are sharply criticizing a paper published by researchers at Harvard Medical School in the United States, which suggests that the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) may have emerged in Wuhan, China, as early as late August last year.

On the 11th, Global Times reported that Chinese doctors and scientists have been pointing out flaws in the Harvard research team's paper one after another, calling the paper a deliberate attempt by the U.S. to throw mud on China's hard-won victory in the battle against COVID-19.

The Harvard research team recently claimed in a paper submitted to the international academic journal Nature Digital Medicine that COVID-19 may have emerged in August last year. They stated that the number of vehicles parked at five hospitals in Wuhan noticeably increased from August 2018 and peaked in December of that year. They argued that crowded hospital parking lots indicate how busy the hospitals were at that time.

Chinese experts pointed out that the satellite images of hospital parking lots in Wuhan analyzed by the Harvard team were deliberately adjusted in angle to make them appear crowded. They explained that the fact that a world-renowned institution like Harvard published such an absurd paper shows that it has succumbed to the U.S.'s political conspiracy against China and that its long-standing reputation among Chinese students has been destroyed.

Doctors from Wuhan Zhongnan Hospital and Tongji Hospital cited in the Harvard paper denied the claim that traffic at the hospital entrances suddenly surged last fall, and also dismissed the paper's assertion that the hospitals received more patients with fever or diarrhea symptoms than usual. Feng Jiyong, head of the intensive care unit at Zhongnan Hospital, said, "This is completely untrue," adding, "If the Harvard paper's content were true, considering the high transmissibility of COVID-19, the virus spread would have appeared earlier."

Global Times also rejected the Harvard team's claim that searches for "cold" and "diarrhea," known as representative symptoms of COVID-19, surged on Baidu, China's largest search engine, at the time when the number of patients visiting Wuhan hospitals increased.

The newspaper stated, "Global Times reporters directly accessed Baidu's search tracking system and investigated the search volumes for 'cough' and 'diarrhea.' They found no significant differences in last fall's situation compared to the same period in the past two years," adding, "The Harvard paper has been used as ammunition by Western politicians, including former President Trump, to attack China. Western media such as CNN, BBC, and ABC report only the general content of the paper without mentioning its flaws."

China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs also publicly expressed dissatisfaction with the Harvard paper. Hua Chunying, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a regular briefing on the 9th, "We have not yet reviewed the related research, but drawing such conclusions based on vehicle traffic volume is very absurd. There are too many conspiracy theories targeting China regarding the origin of COVID-19."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.