The origins of Covid-19 are still a mystery. Some of them theorize that the outbreak began in a lab, an idea that the US government has back to some extent, but the scientific community mostly agrees that the coronavirus was transmit from an animal to a human.
The academic journal Science recently publish a piece that sheds light on the so-called ‘patient zero’.
The World Health Organization has always maintain that the first case of Covid-19 occur in December 2019.
The infected person allegedly was a 41-year old Chinese accountant, a man unrelate to the Huanan Seafood Market of Wuhan where many researchers believe the virus began.
An article in Science by American researcher Michael Worobey refutes the hypothesis of the WHO and identifies patient zero as someone link to this controversial wet market where wildlife was sold.
After an extensive data analysis of December arrivals to the local hospitals, showing a strange, new form of pneumonia, Worobey concludes that patient zero was a female vendor in the Huanan wet market.
She was the first person with Covid-19 in Wuhan and the world.
Day that Change the World
Everything began on 11st December, 2019 in Wuhan, China, as per the thesis of the Science study.
That’s when the female vendor was admit to a hospital and that Covid-19 cases began to spread.
Center of the Catastrophe
The Science study concludes that the wet market in Wuhan was the center of the pandemic.
The patient zero that the WHO had propose, live far from the market, and tracking the origins of the pandemic to him was much more difficult.
Infected Animals
Worobey and the other authors of the article state in Science that it was probably the infection of animals with Covid-19 at the market that caused the pandemic.
It’s impossible to know how many animals infect with coronavirus were on the premises.
Infections before the Market Closed
The virus freely evolve in the time between the first major cluster of Covid-19 cases and the day the market was closed.
The Huanan market close down on 1st January, 2020.
Wet Markets
Traditional wet markets that sell living animals are a common feature in Asia.
The possibility that cage animals transmit new diseases to humans in such environments is very real and dangerous.
Close Contact
The risk of these markets comes from the close contact between wildlife and humans.
Infections can occur through saliva, bites, and other interactions in which biological material is exchanged.
Eating an animal that’s already been slaughter represents no danger.
How it All began?
The researchers came very close to where it all began, but they admit in Science that the lack of a sample from the animal population in the market is frustrating.
They can never know exactly how the coronavirus emerged at that place.
The timeline and chronological analysis done by Michael Worobey and the others in Science serves only to point out the direct connection between the pandemic and a Chinese wet market.
It can help, albeit in a limited sense, in the prevention of future epidemics.
Bats?
The study publish by Science magazine rules out that the origin of the pandemic was in any way relate to some sort of infection produce by contact with bats.
But all the end of the day, the mystery continues.
Scholars now think they know who patient zero was a woman who spread the disease to her whole family but they still don’t know what type of animal the illness came from or how Covid-19 began in the first place.
What about that Accountant?
Science magazine points out that the famous patient zero postulate by the WHO was most likely infect by community transmission.
This means that the virus was already spreading when the 41-year old accountant got ill.
He just happen to be the first case where people notice that it wasn’t a common illness.
It’s important to remember the shock and disorder during the early stages of the pandemic.
On 1st January, 2020, the whole world celebrate the arrial of a new year without too many concerns.
But as news of a strange pneumonia in China starts to make headlines, nobody thought much about it.
When the Pandemic Begins?
It would take until 30th January, 2020 for the World Health Organization to define Covid-19 as a pandemic.
The virus was going to affect the entire world and life across the planet would change radically.
Vaccination
The pandemic rages on.
Some European countries are going through a new, tragic wave of Covid-19 cases while at the same time protests continue among those who don’t want to get the shots.
If anything is certain right now is that vaccination is the key for a future free of deaths by coronavirus.
THANK YOU FOR READING.
