Coronavirus: why it is so important to know the identity of the “zero patient”, the first human to become infected with covid-19

Chinese authorities and experts concentrate on discovering the origin of the current outbreak of coronavirus, also called covid-19.

Specifically, they want to find the “zero patient”, the first person infected by this infection.

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What does the “zero patient” mean and why is it so important?

Patient zero is the term used to describe the first infected human for a virus or infectious disease.

Identifying the first person infected by a particular outbreak or disease is important because it can answer crucial questions about how, when and why it originated.

These responses help prevent more people from becoming infected now or in future epidemics.

Do we know who is the “zero patient” of the coronavirus?

The short answer is no. We do not know.

Chinese authorities said the first case of coronavirus was December 31, 2019. Immediately, many of the first cases of infection were linked to a seafood and animal market in Wuhan, in Hubei province.

This region is the epicenter of the outbreak. Almost 82% of the more than 75,000 cases registered in China and the world are from Wuhan, according to statistics collected by John Hopkins University, United States.

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However, a study published by Chinese researchers in the medical journal Lancet says that The first person diagnosed with covid-19 was December 1, 2019 and that “he had no contact” with the market.

Wu Wenjuan, a doctor at Jinyintan Hospital in Wuhan and one of the authors of that study, told the BBC Chinese service that the patient was an elderly man with Alzheimer’s disease.

“The patient lived at four or five bus stations in the seafood market and, since he was ill, he basically could not leave home,” said Wu Wenjain.

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The doctor also said that three other people developed symptoms in the following days. Two of them had not been in the market either.

However, the researchers also found that 27 people from a sample of 41 patients admitted to the hospital at the beginning of the outbreak “had been exposed to the market.”

The hypothesis that the outbreak began in the market and then was transmitted from a live animal to a human is still considered the most likely, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Can only one person trigger such an epidemic?

The Ebola epidemic between 2014 and 2016 in West Africa has been the largest since the virus was discovered in 1976.

He killed about 11,000 people and infected about 28,000, according to WHO. The epidemic spread over two years and cases were detected in 10 countries, mostly in Africa but also in the United States, Spain, United Kingdom and Italy.

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The scientists concluded that this outbreak had begun in a single person, a two-year-old boy from Guinea. They said he had become infected while playing in the hollow of a tree where a colony of bats lived.

The findings were published in the journal of molecular medicine EMBO. Earlier, researchers went to the baby’s village, Meliandou, to take samples and chat with the locals about the Ebola fountain.

“The most iconic zero patient of all time” was nicknamed María Typhoid

Probably, the first “zero patient” was Mary Mallon, nicknamed “Mary Typhoid”, for causing an outbreak of typhoid fever in New York in 1906.

Originally from Ireland, Mary emigrated to the United States, where She worked as a cook for many rich families.

In each place he worked, family members of the house began to develop typhoid fever.

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The doctors called him healthy carrier. That is, someone infected by a disease but showing no symptoms.

There is ample evidence that some people are more “efficient” than others in transmitting viruses and Mary is one of the first cases to have the “ability” known as “superpropagers”.

At that time, the disease affected several thousand New Yorkers annually and had 10% mortality.

Why do so many scientists not like the term?

Many health experts are against identifying the first documented cases of an epidemic for fear that it can trigger misinformation or victimization of the person.

A famous example is that of the man who was mistakenly identified as the “zero patient” of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) epidemic.

Gaetan Dugas, a Canadian homosexual flight attendant, is one of the most demonized patients in history. He is blamed for expanding HIV in the US in the 80’s.

Three decades later, scientists said Duga could not be the first case. In a 2016 study they showed that the virus had migrated from the Caribbean to the US. in the early 70s.

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Interestingly, it was during the HIV epidemic that the term “zero patient” was created by accident.

While investigating the transmission of the disease in Los Angeles and San Francisco in the early 1980s, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) used the letter “O” (out) to refer to cases of patients “outside of the state of California. ”

Other experts confused the letter as if it were a number 0, and there the term “patient zero” originated.

Then, Professor Oliver Pybus, from the University of Oxford, commented on this study.

“The Zero Patient has an interesting point, which has become an object of conversation about the origins of AIDS. However, no matter how attractive this narrative is, it has no scientific basis. In addition, it is very unfortunate that this person has been identified, “Pybus said.

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