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The identity of what “patient zero” would be is still unknown, and at least 266 cases of the new coronavirus have been identified from that November day until the end of last year, according to information from Chinese authorities examined 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 suspicious patients.
First cases of COVID-19 in China
Despite the fact that the first confirmed case occurred in November last year, It wasn’t until December that doctors in China learned that it was a new disease, noted the portal in its publication. Indeed, there are several versions of the confirmation date, but the official WHO one is December 8, 2019.
From The first case was confirmed in a 55-year-old resident of Hubei province, one to five new patients were alerted daily and, as of December 20, they were already 60 infected with the new coronavirus. In January 2020, it was reported that there had been an outbreak in the city of Wuhan (which is now one of the most touristic cities in China) and two months later it became a global emergency, the news read.
A total of 266 cases of COVID-19 occurred on December 31 and the figure rose to 381 the next day, on January 1 of this year. At the moment, the virus is believed to have passed from a wild animal, which could be a bat, to humans, but the first infected person has not been identified, the named outlet explained.
According to the Hong Kong newspaper, of the first 9 confirmed cases 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, COVID-19 cases in Wuhan count since the virus appeared.
The World Health Organization has assured that the first confirmed case of COVID-19 was on December 8, 2019. However, the aforementioned media pointed out that the agency is not in charge of tracking the disease, but receives the information from countries, so it is normal that the date does not agree with that reported in China.
For their part, Chinese researchers have published a study on medical journal The Lancet in which they determined it the symptoms of the first patient identified with the new disease began on 1 December last year and the person had no contact with the Huanan fish wholesale market, where the first COVID-19 outbreak is believed to have originated (for which there is various types of evidence).
On the other hand, the Chinese news program indicated that, according to medical reports, healthcare professionals realized they were facing a new disease in late December, but They could not disclose their results because the government prevented them. In fact, Wuhan health authorities only reported 41 cases as of January 11, 2020.
According to CNN, January 7 last year was the day that Chinese authorities identified it was a new type of coronavirus called 2019-nCoV, initially by the WHO. The first virus death was announced on 11 January: a 61-year-old man who died two days earlier from respiratory failure caused by pneumonia.
On January 13, the first case of the novel coronavirus outside of China was reported; He 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 Washington state.
On February 11, WHO named the disease COVID-19 due to the combination of the English words ‘corona’, ‘virus’ and ‘disease’, and 19 indicates the year it started, he added. medium in your article. A month later, on March 11, the organization declared the new epidemic a pandemic (which would cause up to 100,000 additional deaths from malaria). So far, more than 60 million cases have been recorded in 254 countries and more than 1.4 million deaths.
The coronavirus did not start in China, according to that country’s newspaper
Despite reports indicating that the novel coronavirus has started 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 in 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 quoted a statement from 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 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zhao Lijian, said that “although China was the first to report cases, it does not necessarily mean that the virus originated in China“.
But nevertheless, few Western specialists believe the virus originated outside the Asian country. Indeed, Michael Ryan, director of the World Health Organization (WHO) health emergencies program, said, quoted by the British news, that “it is clear from a public health point of view that investigations begin where cases have arisen. human. “.
On the theory that the novel coronavirus was circulating in Italy in autumn 2019, Professor Jonathan Stoye, a virologist at the Francis Crick Institute in London, said that relationships are “weak” and that antibodies found in the cases in the European country were activated in those who had been infected with other coronaviruses, not 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 never should have happened, and how to stop the next one” by author and journalist of the scientific journal New Scientist, Debora Mackenzie, quoted by National Geographic, the pandemic could not have been prevented, but it probably would have stopped it if the disease monitoring system had performed its function since December 2019.
In that order of ideas, If Wuhan had warned the world in advance of the new pneumonia, everything would be differentAs ProMED (Emerging Disease Monitoring Program) was able to determine that it was a contagious and dangerous disease in December or early January 2021, the aforementioned media pointed out.
Therefore, WHO would have made the announcement and specialists would have focused on making studies and reports much sooner than it actually happened. Similarly, according to the author, vaccines, medicines and diagnostic tests would have started earlierand even “tests” could have been launched on those who had been to Wuhan.
The journalist, quoted by the aforementioned portal, added that warning the whole world ahead of what was happening in Wuhan would give the rest of the countries “a few weeks of advantage”, which would have been very important, because, despite being few, have a great effect on the “exponential curve”.
Although the author points out that it was very unlikely that the onset of the disease could be prevented, he makes sure 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 needed to prevent a new pandemic is to act promptly, because even if the correct actions are taken, if they are made too late, they are not enough to stop the emergency, as happened in Italy.
For Mackenzie, the European country did the right thing by enforcing isolation, monitoring cases and confining locations with multiple cases, but it was done 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.
Indeed, for two years the WHO spoke of a ‘disease X’ which would be “caused by a currently unknown pathogen capable of causing disease in humans”, noted the BBC a few months ago. For Dr Josie Golding, head of epidemiology at the Wellcome Trust London research organization, COVID-19 is one such condition.
Golding, quoted from the aforementioned newsletter, indicated that, thanks to the fact that the as yet unknown disease has been added to the WHO list, entities responsible for the production of vaccines and therapies have been created, but how 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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