The Covid outbreak began in China months before Beijing alerted the world, scientists have claimed. Researchers at the Institute for Genomics and Evolutionary Medicine at Temple University in Philadelphia have argued that the virus dates back to mid-October.
This flies in the face of the timeline pushed by Chinese authorities, which began publicly reacting to the virus at the start of 2020.
The study's suggested date fits with US State Department claims that researchers at the top-security Wuhan Institute of Virology fell sick in the autumn of 2019.
Scientists from the US university analysed samples from thousands of coronavirus patients and claim that the virus "definitely" began in China, the Mail on Sunday reported.