New study says Covid was in US in Dec 2019

WASHINGTON: At least seven people in five US states were infected with the coronavirus weeks before those states reported their first cases, a new government study has shown.

The development came at a time when the US death toll from the Covid-19 pandemic surpassed 600,000, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.

In the study, participants who reported antibodies against SarsCoV-2 were likely exposed to the virus at least several weeks before their samples were taken, as the antibodies do not appear until about two weeks after a person has been infected, the researchers said.

The results build on findings from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study that suggested the virus may have been circulating in the US in late December 2019, before the first Covid-19 case was detected on January 19, 2020. The positive samples came from Illinois, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and were part of a study of more than 24,000 blood samples taken for a National Institutes of Health research programme between January 2 and March 18, 2020.

The WHO chief Tedros Ghebreyesus warned on Monday that Covid-19 was moving faster than the vaccines, and said the G7’s vow to share a billion doses with poorer nations was simply not enough.

Meanwhile, AstraZeneca said its antibody cocktail was only 33% effective in preventing Covid symptoms in people exposed to the virus as part of a study to find a way to tackle the virus.

In Pakistan, taking a cue from Punjab province, the Sindh government has announced it will block the mobile SIM cards of those who refuse to take the Covid-19 vaccines, according to a media report on Tuesday.