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KOMPAS.com – Virologist Spanish has shown a trace corona virus in the Barcelona wastewater sample collected in March 2019.
The very early discovery of the viral genome in Spain might indicate that Covid-19 had emerged much earlier than predicted by the scientific community.
The research team from Barcelona University, which has tested wastewater since mid-April this year to identify potential new outbreaks, decided to also test older samples.
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Quoted from Reuters, Saturday (06/27/2020), researchers found the virus appeared in Barcelona on January 15, 2020 or 41 days before the first case report.
They then tested samples taken between January 2018 and December 2019.
The result, researchers found the presence of a viral genome in one of the samples collected on March 12, 2019.
“The SARS-CoV-2 level is low but positive,” said research leader Albert Bosch.
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Conclusions are too early
Dr Joan Ramon Villalbi from the Spanish Community group for Public Health and Sanitation Administration said it was still too early to draw definitive conclusions.
“When it’s just one result, you always want more data, more research, more samples to confirm and rule out laboratory errors or methodological problems,” he said.
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According to him, there is still a chance of false positives due to the similarity of the virus with other respiratory infections.
“But it must be interesting, suggestive,” Villabi said.
According to Bosch who also serves as the Head of the Spanish Association of Virologists, early detection even in January could improve responses to the corona virus pandemic.
Conversely, patients who may have been misdiagnosed with the common cold contribute to community transmission before action is taken.
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Case of “strange pneumonia”
Illustration of chest (lung) CT scan showing pneumonia, the corona virus that causes Covid-19.-
Gertjan Medema from the KWR Water Research Institute in the Netherlands, whose team began using the test coronavirus in wastewater in February, suggested the Barcelona group needed to repeat the test to ensure it was truly the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
If the findings are true, then the appearance of the corona virus in Spain is longer than the findings in Italy and France.
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In May 2020, the results of a CT scan analysis at the Albert Schweitzer Hospital, France showed that the corona virus has been around since November 16, 2019 or 10 weeks before the first case in France.
The hospital carried out a retrospective study of the results of a chest scan on about 2,500 patients who underwent CT scans from 1 November 2019 to 30 April 2020.
Meanwhile, Italy has reported “strange pneumonia” in northern Italy in November 2019.
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