据美国《纽约时报》8日报道，最新的基因研究表明，新冠病毒早在2月中旬就开始在纽约地区传播，病毒主要是从欧洲输入，而非亚洲。
Researchers suggested the coronavirus was circulating in New York in mid-February as genetic analysis showed that the virus came to the area mainly from Europe, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.纽约西奈山伊坎医学院遗传学家哈姆·范·巴克尔在一份研究报告中写道，携带病毒到纽约的大多是欧洲旅行者。他参与撰写的这份研究报告正在等待同行的评审。纽约大学格罗斯曼医学院的研究人员对另一组病例进行了研究，得出了与巴克尔团队惊人的相似结论。两支研究团队均从3月中旬开始，分析纽约确诊病例的新冠病毒基因组。Harm van Bakel, a geneticist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who co-wrote a study awaiting peer review, was quoted as saying that the majority of the travelers who brought in the virus were European.A separate team at NYU Grossman School of Medicine came to strikingly similar conclusions, despite studying a different group of cases, said the report.Both teams analyzed genomes from coronaviruses taken from New Yorkers starting in mid-March.另据彭博社报道，上个月，纽约大学研究人员对纽约市75名新冠肺炎患者的样本进行了分析，其中三分之二来自欧洲。该大学医学院教授阿德里亚娜·海居表示，新冠病毒似乎是从“英国和法国、奥地利、荷兰等几个欧洲国家”输入到纽约市的。The NYU researchers conducted an analysis of 75 samples from COVID-19 patients at the hospitals in the New York City last month, according to Bloomberg.Adriana Heguy, professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, said two-thirds of them "appear to have European origins."The virus appears to have been imported to the city from "the UK and several European countries, including France, Austria, and the Netherlands," she said.在研究人员收集的病例中，有一名来自长岛的居民，不曾有旅行史，但研究人员发现其携带的病毒基因组与在英国传播的病毒毒株有相关性，这表明该患者曾与从英国带走病毒的人接触过。研究结果还显示，新冠病毒通过每天从欧洲出发的航班输入到纽约市。From one case they sequenced – who was a Long Island resident without travel history, the researchers found that the viral genome shows a correlation with a strain circulating in England, which indicated that the patient had contact with someone who carried the virus from the UK.The research also revealed daily flights from Europe were a way to bring the virus to the city.