China is being blamed for the current coronavirus pandemic that hit the world so badly. But there are some findings to the contrary. New data reveals that cases were present in smaller numbers in Europe, USA, Brazil, and Japan even before each of these countries reported them after China first reported it.
Retro testing of blood samples
Some countries such as Italy, Spain, France, USA, Brazil, and Japan did testing for covid-19 on stored or fresh blood samples collected before January 2020 or in between January 2020 and March 2020 respectively. And there were positive results for covid-19 in some of these blood samples of individuals who were either sick or died due to the infection.
In the USA, as early as December 2019 blood tested had antibodies for the novel virus. And these antibodies take 14 days to develop. This implies that even before their first reported case of covid on 21 January 2020, there were cases already on the American soil. Natalie Thornburg, principal investigator of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s respiratory virus immunology team stated:
"There was probably very rare and sporadic cases here earlier than we were aware of. But it was not widespread and didn't become widespread until late February,"
106 out of 7389 blood collected from donors had antibodies against coronavirus. These collections were done before 17 January 2020.
France, Italy, Brazil data
In France, a swab of a male patient from ICU tested positive for coronavirus. And this was 1 month before their first reported case on 24 January 2020.
In Brazil, coronavirus has been recovered from a sewerage sample collected in November 2019.
Similarly, sewerage samples of December 2019 taken from Milan and Turin have tested positive for coronavirus. September 2019 blood samples also showed antibodies to coronavirus. INT biologist Gabriella Sozzi said:
"What we noticed, and it was unexpected, we found more than 10 percent of the samples presenting antibodies against the COVID-19 virus,"
"This finding seems to tell us that the SARS‑CoV‑2 virus was probably circulating at a low level in Italy before the outbreak that we had in February."
111 out of 959 healthy volunteers for another study also had antibodies against coronavirus as early as September 2019.
Data from Spain and Japan
It is astonishing to learn that sewer water from near Barcelona also tested positive for coronavirus as early as March 2019. Other blood samples also had links to the virus. The study authors state:
"Those infected could have been diagnosed with flu in primary care by mistake, contributing to the community transmission before the public health authorities took measures."
In Japan, 2 out of 500 blood donation samples collected between January to March 2019 had tested positive for covid - 19. There is a likelihood of these two results being false-positive.
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This implies that before the viral infection took a pandemic turn, it was seen as scattered cases in countries much before they reported their first cases after the Wuhan outbreak and its reporting.
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