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The identity of what would be the ‘patient zero’ is still unknown, and at least 266 cases of the new coronavirus were identified from that day in November until the end of last year, according to information from the Chinese authorities reviewed by the newspaper South China Morning Post.
According to the aforementioned media, it is very likely that some of the known cases from 2019, which were under medical surveillance, were retroactive due to the analysis of samples taken from suspected patients.
First cases of COVID-19 in China
Despite the fact that the first confirmed case occurred in November of last year, It wasn’t until December that doctors in China learned that it was a new diseaseThe portal pointed out in its publication. In fact, there are several versions about the confirmation date, but the official one from the WHO is December 8, 2019.
Since The first case was confirmed in a 55-year-old resident of Hubei Province, from one to five new patients were notified daily, and, as of December 20, there were already 60 infected with the new coronavirus. In January 2020 it was reported that there was an epidemic in the city of Wuhan (which is now one of the most tourist cities in China) and two months later it became a global emergency, the news said.
On December 31 there were a total of 266 cases of COVID-19, and the figure rose to 381 a day later, on January 1 of this year. At the moment, it is believed that the virus passed from a wild animal, which could be a bat, to humans, but the first infected person has not been identified, explained the named outlet.
According to the Hong Kong newspaper, of the first 9 cases that were confirmed in November last year, none were reported as ‘patient zero’, although they all lived in Wuhan. These people were between 39 and 79 years old.
In the following video they count the cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan since the virus appeared.
The World Health Organization assured that the first confirmed case of COVID-19 was on December 8, 2019. However, the aforementioned media pointed out that the entity is not in charge of tracking the disease, but that it receives the information from the countries, so it is normal that the date does not agree with that reported in China.
For their part, Chinese researchers published a study in the The Lancet medical journal in which they determined that symptoms of the first patient identified with the new disease began on December 1 last year and the person had no contact with the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where the first COVID-19 outbreak is believed to have originated (for which there are various types of evidence).
On the other hand, the Chinese newscast indicated that, according to medical reports, professionals in the health sector realized that they were facing a new disease at the end of December, but They could not disseminate their findings because the government prevented them. In fact, Wuhan health authorities reported only 41 cases as of January 11, 2020.
According to CNN, January 7 of last year was the day that the Chinese authorities identified that it was a new type of coronavirus called 2019-nCoV, initially, by the WHO. On January 11, the first death from the virus was announced: a 61-year-old man who died two days earlier from respiratory failure caused by pneumonia.
On January 13, the first case of the new coronavirus was reported outside of China; It was a citizen of that country who arrived in Thailand on a flight from Wuhan. Then, on January 21, the first case was presented in the United States; the infected one was in the state of Washington.
On February 11, the WHO named the disease COVID-19 due to the union of the English words ‘corona’, ‘virus’ and ‘disease’, and the 19 indicates the year in which it began, added the medium in your article. One month after, on March 11, the organization declared the new outbreak a pandemic (which would cause up to 100,000 additional deaths from malaria). So far, more than 60 million cases have been registered in 254 countries and more than 1.4 million deaths.
Coronavirus did not start in China, according to that country’s newspaper
Despite reports indicating that the new coronavirus began in Wuhan, Hubei, China, the country is trying to erase that image and states that SARS-CoV-2 did not originate in the Asian country. According to a Facebook post from the People’s Daily newspaper, quoted by The Guardian, “All available evidence suggests that the coronavirus did not start in Wuhan, central China.”
The Chinese newspaper mentioned a statement by former epidemiologist and head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Zeng Guang, who said that “Wuhan was where the coronavirus was first detected, but not where it originated”The Guardian reported.
Regarding the origin, the aforementioned media indicated that the deputy director of the information department of the Chinese foreign ministry, Zhao Lijian, stated that “although China was the first to report cases, does not necessarily mean that the virus originated in China”.
But nevertheless, few Western specialists believe that the virus originated outside the Asian country. In fact, Michael Ryan, director of the health emergencies program of the World Health Organization (WHO), said, quoted by the British news, that “it is clear from a public health perspective that investigations begin where human cases arose ”.
On the theory that the new coronavirus was circulating in Italy in autumn 2019, Professor Jonathan Stoye, a virologist at the Francis Crick Institute in London, said that reports are “weak” and that the antibodies found in cases in the European country were activated in those who had been infected with other coronaviruses, not with SARS-CoV-2, the aforementioned media detailed.
What would have happened if the coronavirus had been detected in time?
According to the book ‘The pandemic that should never have happened, and how to stop the next one’ by the author and reporter of the scientific journal New Scientist, Debora Mackenzie, cited by National Geographic, the pandemic could not have been prevented, but it would have been likely to stop it if the system that monitors diseases had performed its function since December 2019.
In that order of ideas, If Wuhan had warned the world about the new pneumonia in advance, everything would be differentBecause ProMED (Program for the Monitoring of Emerging Diseases) was capable of determining that it was a contagious and dangerous disease in December or early January 2021, the aforementioned media pointed out.
Therefore, the WHO would have made the announcement, and the specialists would have focused on doing studies and reports long before what actually happened. Likewise, according to the author, vaccines, medicines and diagnostic tests would have started before, and even ‘tests’ could have been launched on those who had traveled to Wuhan.
The reporter, quoted by the aforementioned portal, added that notifying the whole world earlier about what was happening in Wuhan would have given the rest of the countries “a few weeks of advantage”, which would have been very important, because, despite be few, they have a great effect on “the exponential curve.”
Although the author emphasizes that it was very unlikely that the onset of the disease could be prevented, she does ensure that, if it had been acted more quickly, the epidemic could have been stopped so that it did not reach the level of a pandemic.
Indeed, the expert points out that what is necessary to prevent a new pandemic is to take early action, because even if the correct actions are taken, if they are made too late, they are not enough to stop the emergency, as it happened in Italy.
For Mackenzie, the European country did the right thing by imposing isolation, monitoring cases and confining the localities with more cases, but it was carried out too late, because the coronavirus had already spread.
In this video, for example, they assure that in Italy there have been more deaths than those published.
In fact, for two years, the WHO spoke of a ‘disease X’ that it would be “caused by a currently unknown pathogen capable of causing disease in humans”, noted BBC a few months ago. For Dr Josie Golding, head of epidemiology at the Wellcome Trust London research organization, COVID-19 is such a condition.
Golding, cited by the aforementioned newsletter, indicated that, thanks to the fact that the still unknown disease was added to the WHO list, entities responsible for the production of vaccines and therapies were created, but as experts never imagined it would reach pandemic level, there were many things to do.
“We could have done more to fund preparedness efforts around the world, including ways to identify these types of new pathogens that could emerge,” the expert said in her book.
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