‘1st China Covid-19 case can be traced back to Nov 17 in Hubei’

BEIJING: The first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus in China can be traced back to November 17, a media report said citing government data.

A 55-year-old individual from Hubei province could have been the first person to have contracted the infection and cases rapidly began piling up since then, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported on Friday, without revealing the gender of the patient.

Hubei province and its capital Wuhan subsequently became its epicentre of the virus as it rapidly spread at home and abroad before Chinese health officials could identify the deadly virus, it said. Chinese authorities have so far identified at least 266 people who were infected in 2019. All of them came under medical surveillance at some point, the report said.

Hubei is under lockdown since January 23 after it became a battleground for the novel coronavirus. The total confirmed Covid-19 cases in the hard-hit province so far is 67,786, which showed the extent of the spread of the virus in the area.

Wuhan has so far reported 49,991 confirmed cases, including 2,436 deaths, the local health commission said on Friday.

According to the Post report, scientists have been trying to map the pattern of the early transmission of Covid-19 since an epidemic was reported in Wuhan in January, two months before the outbreak became a global health crisis. Understanding how the disease spread and determining how undetected and undocumented cases contributed to its transmission will greatly improve their understanding of the size of that threat, it said.

Since November 17, one to five new coronavirus cases surfaced each day. By December 15, the total number of infections stood at 27 and by December 20, the total number of confirmed cases reached 60, the report said.