Chinese miners fell ill with ‘covid-like virus’ in 2012, scientists claim

COVID-19 may have first struck eight years ago in a mineshaft in China rather than a wet market in Wuhan last year, scientists have claimed. 

In 2012 six people working at the Mojiang mine, in Yunnan province, suffered from a pneumonia-like sickness after completing a job removing bat feces. 

In total three of them died after experiencing a fever, dry cough, and other symptoms linked to COVID-19 and were treated in a similar way to those who contracted the virus. 

Virologist Jonathan Latham and molecular biologist Allison Wilson studied Chinese doctor  Li Xu’s thesis on the incident and now claim it could have been the first occurrence of the infection.