When did Covid-19 first appear in the US?

‘A US mayor claims he had COVID-19 last November, over one month before China reported its initial cases. If this was really the case, how did he get it and from where? How long ago did the virus start spreading in the US? In this episode of Getting to the Point, CGTN anchor Liu Xin asks the big question.’

View here (CGTN, Youtube, May 6, 2020)

Cook County searching for overlooked COVID-19 deaths as far back as November just ‘to cover our bases’

‘The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office is planning to review a “handful” of cases dating as far back as November to determine whether some earlier coronavirus deaths were overlooked. “We don’t anticipate having [coronavirus] cases from November, but if we found that we had cases in November, we might want to look even earlier,” Derevyanny said. “Again, we don’t anticipate that, we just want to cover our bases and make sure that we have the most complete data we can for COVID-19.”

Read here (Chicago Sun Times, May 5, 2020)

French doctors say they found a Covid-19 patient from December

‘There's new evidence that the coronavirus may have been in France weeks earlier than was previously thought. Doctors at a Paris hospital say they've found evidence that one patient admitted in December was infected with Covid-19. If verified, this finding would show that the virus was already circulating in Europe at that time -- well before the first known cases were diagnosed in France or hotspot Italy.’

Read here (CNN, May 4, 2020)

The pieces of the puzzle of covid-19’s origin are coming to light

‘Many scientists think that with so many biologists actively hunting for bat viruses, and gain-of-function work becoming more common, the world is at increasing risk of a laboratory-derived pandemic at some point. “One of my biggest hopes out of this pandemic is that we address this issue—it really worries me,” says Dr Pilch. Today there are around 70 bsl-4 sites in 30 countries. More such facilities are planned...

‘The question of whether they really are [unrecognised zoonoses], and how those threats may stack up, needs attention. That attention needs laboratories. It also needs a degree of open co-operation that America is now degrading with accusations and reductions in funding, and that China has taken steps to suppress at source. That suppression has done nothing to help the country; indeed, by supporting speculation, it may yet harm it.’

Read here (The Economist, May 2, 2020)

Covid-19 has a grandma, grandpa and great grandpa. Where are they?

‘In an unusual move last weekend, China’s envoy to Moscow, Zhang Hanhui highlighted that the whole story about Covid-19 is only unfolding and there are surprises in store for the world community.  It is inconceivable that Ambassador Zhang spoke without the knowledge of Beijing. Significantly, the Chinese envoy chose the Russian state news agency Tass for making some startling disclosures.’ The Tass story is entitled “Ambassador says coronavirus imported to China, points to genetic sequence as proof”.

Read here (Indian Punchline, April 21, 2020)

County of Santa Clara identifies three additional early COVID-19 deaths -- much earlier than the one on March 9, 2020, originally thought to be the first in the US

‘The County of Santa Clara Medical Examiner-Coroner has identified three individuals who died with COVID-19 in Santa Clara County before the COVID-19 associated death on March 9, 2020, originally thought to be the first death associated with COVID-19 in the county.

‘The Medical Examiner-Coroner performed autopsies on two individuals who died at home on February 6, 2020 and February 17, 2020. Samples from the two individuals were sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Today, the Medical Examiner-Coroner received confirmation from the CDC that tissue samples from both cases are positive for SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19).’

Read here (Santa Clara County Public Health, April 21, 2020)

Coronavirus outbreak may have started as early as September 2019

‘Based on the data Forster and his colleagues have collected, the coronavirus outbreak appears to have started between September 13 and December 7. “This assumes a constant mutation rate, which is admittedly unlikely to be the case, and the time estimate could therefore be wrong,” he told Newsweek. “But it is the best assumption we can make at the moment, pending analysis of further patient samples stored in hospitals during 2019”.’

Read here (Newsweek, April 17, 2020)

Related

• Cambridge researchers identify 3 variants of Covid-19, say their methods could be used to help identify undocumented infection sources. Read here
• First case of Covid-19, presumably Type A, occurred ‘no earlier than September 13, 2019 and no later than December 7, 2019’. View here

First case of Covid-19, presumably Type A, occurred ‘no earlier than September 13, 2019 and no later than December 7, 2019’

‘Peter Forster, a geneticist at the University of Cambridge, has identified three distinct strains of COVID-19. Forster and his team traced the origins of the epidemic by analysing 160 genomes from human patients and found that the strain in #Wuhan mutated from an earlier version.’

View here (CGTN, Youtube, April 11, 2020)

Cambridge researchers identify 3 variants of Covid-19, say their methods could be used to help identify undocumented infection sources

‘Researchers from Cambridge, UK, and Germany have reconstructed the early “evolutionary paths” of COVID-19 in humans – as infection spread from Wuhan out to Europe and North America – using genetic network techniques... ‘Study charts the “incipient supernova” of COVID-19 through genetic mutations as it spread from China and Asia to Australia, Europe and North America. Researchers say their methods could be used to help identify undocumented infection sources... The research revealed three distinct “variants” of COVID-19, consisting of clusters of closely related lineages, which they label “A”, “B” and “C”.’

Read here (Cambridge Research News, April 9, 2020)