Study: First COVID-19 case likely occurred in November 2019A modeling study yesterday suggests that the first human case of COVID-19 likely occurred in or November of 2019 in China, with the most likely date of origin being Nov 17.
The study was published in PLOS Pathogens.Using methods from conservation science, which is used to determine when species went extinct, scientists worked backward using the dates of the earliest known cases in 203 countries to determine when COVID-19 most likely originated.
The method is called Optimal Linear Estimation (OLE) and can be used with sparse data sets, the authors said.They concluded the likely origin date in China and also suggested the virus would have arrived in Japan on Jan 3, 2020, Spain on Jan