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Exactly one year ago, a mysterious disease appeared in China’s Hubei province, marking the beginning of a pandemic that has so far caused more than 1.3 million deaths worldwide and has infected tens of millions of people, writes Newsweek .
In March, the South China Morning Post published an article based on unpublished information from the Chinese government that the first known case of COVID-19 was identified on November 17, 2019, in a 55-year-old man from Hubei Province. . “Patient Zero” has not been officially confirmed to date.
Beijing authorities did not officially identify the first case until December 8, 2019.
How the epidemic started
In the following weeks, medical staff from Wuhan city, the capital of Hubei province, treated dozens of people with pneumonia of unknown origin. Patients were treated for unexplained symptoms such as fever, cough, and breathing problems.
Among them was an elderly couple who arrived at Hubei hospital on December 26th. Zhang Jixian, a doctor who treated the couple, told Xinhua News Agency in April that the disease “resembled the flu or pneumonia.” Zhang was a medical expert during the SARS epidemic that appeared in China in 2003 and deduced that the two elderly people may have been infected with a new infectious disease. He asked to be tested and the son of the elderly and found in his case the same abnormalities in the lungs. “It is unlikely that three members of a family would have fallen ill with the same disease at the same time were it not for an infectious disease,” the doctor told Xinhua.
On December 27, a patient who found the same abnormalities in the lungs was presented to the hospital.
The disease begins to spread
Zhang Jixian presented a report to his superiors announcing the discovery of a new viral disease.
On December 29, three other patients with similar symptoms showed up at the hospital and the management of the medical unit initiated an internal investigation. These patients were found at one point in a market in Wuhan, as well as a fourth hospitalized.
The internal investigation concluded that those cases of atypical pneumonia were unusual and that more research was needed. The situation was reported to local authorities on 29 December.
The Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention took over the investigation and conducted a field inspection and discovered new cases.
On December 30, authorities in Hubei Province reported the pneumonia outbreak to the Chinese Center for Disease Prevention and Control. At the same time, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued a warning, informing subordinate institutions on how to proceed in the event of a possible outbreak of infectious pneumonia.
On December 31, the commission released the first public message about the pandemic, informing Wuhan residents of the outbreak. 27 cases have been confirmed, including 7 people in serious condition.
There was still no evidence that the disease was transmitted between humans, nor had its cause been detected. Beijing authorities have sent experts to Wuhan to take samples from patients and help local doctors control the disease.
The new virus appears
According to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, laboratory tests performed on samples taken from patients were negative for 26 known pathogens. On January 7, Chinese researchers confirmed that a new coronavirus, called 2019-nCoV, is the cause of the mysterious outbreak.
On January 24, a group of Chinese researchers published a study in The Lancet based on examinations of 41 patients admitted by January 2. The document mentioned that 27 of the patients had attended a market in Wuhan. 13 of them had been hospitalized in intensive care and 6 had died. The study also stated that symptoms appeared on December 1, 2019 in the case of the first identified patient.
The researchers wrote that there were “large gaps” in the information they had about the virus, including where it came from.
The current situation of the coronavirus pandemic
To date, more than 55 million people have been infected with the new coronavirus. Of these, 35.4 million were healed and over 1.3 million died.
The most affected countries, by total number of cases, are the USA (11.2 million cases), India (8.8 million), Brazil (5.8 million), France (1.9 million) , Russia (1.9 million), Spain (1.5 million), the United Kingdom (1.4 million) and Argentina (1.3 million).
The most affected countries, based on the number of deaths, are the USA (246,000), Brazil (166,000), India (130,000), Great Britain (52,000), France (44,000), Spain (41,000) , Argentina (35,000) and Russia (33,000). .
Publisher: VM
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