Members of medical assistance team from Zhejiang are busy at the ICU (intensive care unit) of Wuhan pulmonary hospital in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, March 19, 2020. (File photo: Xinhua)

Brussel (People’s Daily) - The Harvard study which attempted to reset the timeline of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan provides little convincing evidence to support its conclusion, said an official of the World Health Organization (WHO).

The unreviewed preprint, co-authored by researchers from Harvard medical school, Boston University of Public Health and Boston Children’s Hospital, suggested the COVID-19 was spreading in Wuhan as early as August 2019, after collecting information on changes of cars parked at Wuhan hospitals and the searches for “diarrhoea” and “cough” in Chinese search engine Baidu.

“It is important that we do not speculate too much in regarding what the implication of cars is in the parking lot and then make a jump two or three steps forward into what that represents because there is no evidence per se that what was supposed actually happened,” said Dr Michael Ryan, executive director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Program, in Wednesday’s briefing. 

The paper’s findings were quoted by the Trump administration to blame China’s handling of the pandemic while scientists raised questions about the methodology of the research.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson also dismissed the study, calling it “ridiculous.” 

“All the information we gather is important, it is important to look at all different approaches to the investigation of diseases, where they might come from,” said Ryan. “We also have to also look carefully when we make assumptions as regards what a given study finds.”