WHO team in Wuhan, but Italian case dated earlier
Italian updates of coronavirus discoveries offer new perceptions into the origin tracing as an international expert team of the World Health Organization flew from Singapore to China’s Wuhan on Jan 14.
A young lady in Italy was found to have been infected with COVID-19 in November 2019, making her “patient zero” of the coronavirus outbreak in Italy.
The 25-year-old in a northern city was affected by an atypical dermatitis, and a biopsy on her skin highlighted the presence of the novel coronavirus, according to research by a team of scientists at the University of Milan.
The study, published on Jan 7 by the British Journal of Dermatology, identified the presence of RNA gene sequences of the SARS-CoV-2 virus dating to November 2019.
“There are, in this pandemic, cases in which the only sign of COVID-19 infection is that of a skin pathology,” said Raffaele Gianotti, who coordinated the research.
“I wondered if we could find evidence of SARS-CoV-2 in the skin of patients with only skin diseases before the officially recognized epidemic phase began,” said Gianotti, adding “we found ‘the fingerprints’ of COVID-19 in the skin tissue”.
Based on data in world literature, this is “the oldest evidence of the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in a human being”, the report said.
An earlier study by Italian scientists had detected the virus in a 4-year-old boy’s throat secretions, following a swab test conducted in early December 2019. A separate Italian study last year suggested that the coronavirus may have been circulating in the country as early as September 2019.
Meanwhile, a senior WHO official said the mission of the research team arriving in China for novel coronavirus origin-tracing is about scientific answers.
“Understanding the origins of disease is not about finding somebody to blame, it is about scientific answers,” Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Program, said at a virtual press conference from Geneva on Jan 11.
Answering a question on whether the WHO might send teams to any other countries, Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead on COVID-19 response at the WHO Health Emergencies Program, said that the research studies will go where the initial patients were identified and the WHO is also working with different networks.
China has said it supports scientists of all countries in carrying out global scientific research on the origin and route of transmission of the COVID-19 virus, and supports member states in conducting cooperation on the animal origin of the virus under the leadership of the WHO.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian also said at a press conference on Jan 11 that tracing the origin of COVID-19 is a scientific issue and the relevant work should be carried out by scientists through global cooperation.
With the continuous changes in the pandemic situation, increasing understanding of the virus and the discovery of more early cases, the tracing of the origin could more likely involve many countries and localities.