Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Coronavirus Cases As Early As December? Diagnosis Of French Patient Shakes Up Pandemic Chronology
The New York Times: New Report Says Coronavirus May Have Made Early Appearance In France
Weeks before Chinese authorities acknowledged that the coronavirus could be transmitted by humans, and nearly a month before the first officially recorded cases in Europe, a 42-year-old fishmonger showed up at a hospital in suburban Paris coughing, feverish and having trouble breathing. It was Dec. 27. Now doctors in France say that the December patient may have been the earliest known coronavirus case in Europe. If confirmed, the case of the fishmonger, Amirouche Hammar, would mean the deadly virus made an appearance on the continent long before officials there began tackling it. (Nossiter and Breeden, 5/5)
CIDRAP: Study: COVID-19 Detected In France In Late December
COVID-19 has been retrospectively diagnosed in a man treated in an intensive care unit (ICU) near Paris after coughing up blood on Dec 27, 2019—4 days before the novel coronavirus cluster was identified in Wuhan, China. This finding, published this week in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, suggests that the coronavirus was already circulating undetected in France well before the first cases were reported there on Jan 24 in two returned travelers from Wuhan. (Van Beusekom, 5/5)
The Hill: Coronavirus Started Infecting People Globally Late Last Year: Study
The coronavirus has been circulating among people since late 2019 and appears to have experienced a highly rapid spread after the first infection, according to a new genetic analysis of 7,600 patients around the world. Researchers in Britain wrote in a report published Tuesday in the journal Infection, Genetics and Evolution that they examined samples taken at different times and from different places, concluding that the virus first began infecting people late last year. (Axelrod, 5/5)
The Washington Post: Researchers Hypothesize That A Highly Contagious Strain Of The Coronavirus Is Spreading, But Other Experts Remain Skeptical
A research paper from scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, not yet peer-reviewed, reports that one strain of the novel coronavirus has emerged in Europe and become dominant around the planet, leading the researchers to believe the virus has mutated to become more contagious. The bold hypothesis, however, was immediately met with skepticism by many infectious-disease experts, and there is no scientific consensus that any of the innumerable mutations in the virus so far have changed the general contagiousness or lethality of covid-19, the disease caused the coronavirus. (Kaplan and Achenbach, 5/5)
