Was the coronavirus spreading in Europe last year?

Coronavirus. Such a familiar word to all of us has almost lost its meaning, except for the fact that it has changed our lives so drastically.

But when did this new strain of coronavirus begin to take hold?

In January, the new coronavirus was a very strange story, as it spread from the Chinese city of Wuhan.

The first death was recorded in Wuhan on January 11, the first death outside of China occurred two days later in Thailand, a week later, the first case of infection in the United States, in Washington.

Until now, the first person-to-person transmission in Europe was thought to have been a German man infected by a Chinese colleague who visited Germany between January 19 and 22.

But what if the coronavirus was already spreading around the world as early as December?

What would be the meaning of an earlier spread of the disease? Were there many more people infected in those early days when the world thought it was just a problem for China?

On May 3, doctors working at a Paris hospital announced they had discovered that a patient they treated for flu-like symptoms last December had had COVID-19.

French researchers led by Yves Cohen, head of resuscitation at Avicenne and Jean Verdier hospitals, re-analyzed samples from 24 patients treated in December and January who had tested negative for the flu.

The results, published in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, showed that one patient, a 42-year-old man born in Algeria, who had lived in France for many years, was infected with COVID-19 “a month before the first report of cases in our country “.

Speaking to the local station, BFMTV, Amirouche Hammar described the days before going to the hospital.

The resident of the Paris suburb Bobigny described his symptoms: dry cough, fever, fatigue and serious breathing problems.

At first, the 43-year-old man says he thought it was the flu, but after several days of feeling sick, he went to the emergency department on December 27.

This was in late 2019 when the virus had apparently only affected China.

On December 31, China alerted the World Health Organization to several cases of unusual pneumonia in Wuhan, with unknown cause.

Three days later, 44 patients were reported to the WHO, which made an announcement on social media the next day.

#China a group of #pneumonia cases – without deaths – in Wuhan, Hubei Province 🇨🇳. Research is underway to identify the cause of this disease.

– World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) January 4, 2020

The medical team that treated Mr. Hammar faced a dilemma in diagnosing the father of four children. Finally, they declared a lung infection. However, it was not until May that Hammar learned that he had actually been infected by the infamous coronavirus.

Professor Yves Cohen contacted the 43-year-old man to tell him that a swab taken from him in December had tested positive for Covid-19.

How did Covid-19 appear in a patient in Paris when it had not been officially declared in China?

Speaking to the BBC, Professor Cohen says they analyzed whether the patient had any ties to China, which he did not. His wife works at a fish counter in a supermarket, but does not sell fish from China.

However, the team found that she works very close to a sushi counter staffed by several Asian employees. The team asked if she could have contracted it from someone who had traveled to China and brought it home while remaining asymptomatic.

Speaking to BFMTV, Fatiha Hammar presented another theory. The supermarket where he works is near the Charles de Gaulle airport and is frequented by people who come directly from the airport with their suitcases. He wondered if that was another possible source of infection.

What does this tell us about the virus? Simply that it could have originated in France in December, which is important. But do we know if it means that the French case is not linked to Wuhan?

Professor Cohen says it is too early to know. If further research finds a link to the sushi counter staff, then a connection to Wuhan could definitely be found. This virus sample will be examined to see if it has a genomic sequence similar to that of Wuhan.

Otherwise, it would point to other sources of contamination around the world, which would complicate the search for a vaccine, because we would be dealing with other types of viruses.

While the news of a possible “patient zero” in France has sparked much interest, experts advise caution and further research.

Queens University Belfast virologist Dr. Lindsay Broadbent says that if true, it changes the timeline for transmission in Europe, but advises to treat the discovery with caution.

“The type of test used to diagnose Covid-19 is an incredibly sensitive test, and contamination can occur very easily.”

Why would such a discovery be important, if it is true? Dr. Broadbent says it does not change our current situation, but it would drastically change the accepted timeline of the virus.

In January, “we thought we needed to have contact with someone who had been in a severely affected area, such as Wuhan, and this would change that,” because Hamman had not been in China, or had in fact traveled abroad for months.

“It can also affect how many people in the community have been infected. We know that many of these people are asymptomatic … and they may never have been screened or ordered for a test. Therefore, it could mean many more people have had this virus than we think. “

Why is that so important? Well, on the one hand, it changes what we perceive as the mortality rate of the disease. If many more people had the disease than we thought, and the number of recorded deaths remains the same, then the proportion of Covid-19 deaths drops.

It also raises questions about immunity in those who have contracted and recovered from the virus.

But it’s not yet clear how long that immunity lasts, according to Dr. Broadbent: “There is some good evidence starting to emerge that we will certainly be immune for a short time at least. If that lasts from several months to a year, no we do”. I do not know yet. But it seems that most infected people make antibodies against the virus, which is very good news. “

Other experts have also intervened in the French study.

“It is not impossible that it was an early introduction, but the evidence is by no means conclusive,” said Jonathan Ball, professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham in Britain.

Stephen Griffin, an expert at the University of Leeds Medical Research Institute, said it was “a potentially important finding,” but added: “We must be cautious in interpreting these findings.”

Rowland Kao, professor of veterinary epidemiology and data science at the University of Edinburgh, said that even if confirmed, the identification of a positive Covid-19 in December “is not necessarily an indication that the spread of Covid-19 from France started this early. “

“If confirmed, what highlights this case is the speed at which an infection starting in an apparently remote part of the world can quickly spread infections elsewhere,” he said.

France is not the only country to reexamine its chronology of the spread of the coronavirus.

Britain has also been looking for clues to the source of its outbreak, now seen as the worst in Europe, based on the number of deaths from Covid-19.

However, it is important to note that different countries have different ways of counting deaths, so comparisons are not always worthwhile.

On Tuesday, May 5, Britain’s top scientific adviser Patrick Vallance told parliamentarians that genome sequencing suggests that the United Kingdom got many of its coronavirus cases from Europe, rather than China.

“One of the things that seems, very clearly, is that in early March, the UK got many, many different imports of viruses from many different places,” he said.

“And those places were particularly from European countries with outbreaks.

“And then we see a large influx of cases, probably from Italy and Spain, looking at the genomics of the virus in early March, it spread throughout the country, and whether it was people returning from mid-term, whether it be business travelers Or not, we don’t know, but many of the cases in the UK did not come from China and did not come from places you might have expected.

“They actually came from European imports and the high level of travel to the UK at the time.”

Questions have been raised about a Champions League match with Atlético Madrid in Liverpool in March, and whether the spread of the coronavirus increased in the city.

Liverpool and the larger region have suffered disproportionately from the coronavirus.

On March 11, 3,000 fans traveled from Madrid for the clash with Liverpool, at a time when they were not allowed to see their own team play at home, as all La Liga matches were played behind closed doors, without fans present.

Local reports cite public health experts in the city who believe there is a high probability that the increase in cases in the city has been added by the Champions League match.

Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson has asked his public health team to carry out a full investigation to see if there is any connection after several deaths were attributed to the party.

Scientists in the United States are also investigating hidden Covid-19 outbreaks before the “first” official case was declared on January 21.

According to Alessandro Vespignani, a professor at Northeastern University in Boston, the new coronavirus was already circulating in major cities in the United States in January.

Vespignani and her colleagues used a model to predict the global spread of the virus, based on the dynamics of virus infection, as well as human movement and interaction patterns.

According to an investigation published by the group in March, by the time China implemented containment measures in Wuhan on January 21, and the US. USA Issued travel restrictions for those traveling to the US USA Ten days later, it was too late, the virus had spread.

Vespignani says the guidelines at the time were only for evaluating people with a history of travel to China, so if the virus circulated in large cities, people could present with symptoms and not be tested if they hadn’t traveled. to China but they caught him from someone who had.

Add to that the fact that January is the height of the flu season, and you could be getting a critical mass of infections undetected.

“If I have an epidemic that starts in early January, I can project a certain trajectory; if I have an epidemic that starts in early March, everything will change in two months.”

But why is it important? According to Professor Vespignani, understanding the timeline of infections can help researchers make predictions about how it will progress.

“If I have an epidemic that starts in early January, I can project a certain trajectory; if I have an epidemic that starts in early March, everything will change in two months,” says Vespignani. “That is an infinite time for a disease like this. So you really want to be as sharp as possible, down to the level of a single week, to have the correct schedule now to report what we will see in the coming weeks or months.”

Again, Dr. Broadbent advises some caution with new US research. USA, saying that until we have solid data, it’s just a hypothesis.

However, he says the French study shows that it would be a good idea for countries to return to December patient samples and re-analyze them in a very systematic way for Covid-19.

Commenting on the possibility of a new ‘patient zero’ in France in December, the WHO said more information is needed to determine the truth in these cases.

Maria van Kerkhove, technical director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program, said: “In this document, the authors themselves say that it could be a false positive, but assuming that it is not, it is possible that this person has had Covid- December 19 “. .

“This was approximately a month before the first case was reported in France. We need more information on this particular case, if this is the case, to find out the different kind of history this individual may have had. There may be It could have been a case in France as early as December. “

He added that currently more than 100 countries and regions have surveillance systems for influenza. “If you look at a sample from January or even December of last year, it can be positive for Covid-19 and we need to understand how and why this is possible.”

Meanwhile, Michael Ryan, Executive Director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program, added that researchers around the world need to conduct more tests to find similar cases.