Who Was Patient Zero?

The editors of the Washington Post are coming at the search for the origin of SARS-CoV-2 from another direction—who was patient zero? Not to mention where:

IN THE hunt for the origins of the virus that has touched off a global pandemic, the very first cases are extremely important. They could reveal vital information about where the virus came from. China has stated that the outbreak began in Wuhan in December 2019, but this may not be the whole story: There have been suggestions by Chinese and Western scientists that some cases arose earlier. Who were the people who fell ill, and where did they encounter the virus? China should help solve this mystery, but it so far has thrown a cloak over it.

Beijing steadfastly denies there was an inadvertent leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or WIV, one of two theories being pursued about the virus origin. The other is a zoonotic spillover from an animal. President Biden announced Wednesday that the U.S. intelligence community was divided over the competing theories and said he had urged further investigation.

Identification of the earliest cases could help resolve the issue. On Jan. 15, outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. government “has reason to believe that several researchers inside” the Wuhan Institute of Virology “became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.” But he provided no further evidence for this vague claim, and when a joint World Health Organization-China mission went to the WIV on Feb. 3, the director, Yuan Zhiming, categorically denied Mr. Pompeo’s assertion. It would help if the administration declassified the U.S. intelligence.

Here’s what’s known so far about early cases: On Dec. 31, 2019, China notified the WHO of 44 cases of pneumonia of unknown cause. By the time China agreed to a joint study with the WHO in summer 2020, the number of these cases had grown to 124. The resulting joint report in March 2021 said Chinese records had established 174 confirmed cases in December 2019, and the first onset among these was Dec. 8.

Were there others before that? In preparation for the WHO-China joint mission, Chinese officials examined 76,253 cases of fever or respiratory illness in 233 health-care institutions from Oct. 1 to Dec. 10, 2019. Out of this mass of records, they identified 92 people who might have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 in the autumn. However, on further scrutiny, all 92 cases were rejected as covid.

I don’t think they’re looking at the question broadly enough. Could Patient Zero have been in Italy? Australia? The UK? The U. S.? Studies based on viral evolution models have proposed a date of sometime between the middle of September 2019 and the middle of December 2019 with some time in October 2019 looking pretty darned likely. Being open about the suspected cases from 2019 could actually vindicate China’s claims that the virus developed somewhere else.