Nurses at Montefiore New Rochelle Hospital go on strike over safe staffing issues during the COVID-19 pandemic in New Rochelle, New York, on Dec 1. (MARK LENNIHAN / AP)
While some scientists are racing against time to find vaccines for COVID-19, others are looking into the coronavirus’ origin.
In recent months, researchers in countries such as the United States, Italy and France have suggested that COVID-19 infections may have gone unnoticed long before December 2019, based on analyses of wastewater or blood samples.
Researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found coronavirus infections in 106 of 7,389 blood donations collected from residents in nine states across the country as early as mid-December last year.
Their study was published on
Nov 30 on the website of medical journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
The new study provides perspective on the mysterious origin of the coronavirus, as other scientific papers also indicated that the virus emerged in France in late December 2019 and in Italy even earlier — around the time or before “pneumonia of unknown cause” was identified in China on Dec 27.
The World Health Organization said it received China’s official report on the clusters of cases on Jan 3.
As of Dec 2, the world has recorded at least 63.9 million confirmed infection cases, which claimed more than 1.48 million lives, including more than 270,000 in the US, according to Reuters.
The specimens for the US study, gathered by the American Red Cross between Dec 13, 2019 and Jan 17 were sent to the US CDC for retrospective testing to see if any had antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the respiratory virus that causes COVID-19.
As a result, the CDC scientists found anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in 39 samples from the states of California, Oregon and Washington, collected as early as Dec 13 to 16, 2019. The CDC scientists said their presence indicates that isolated infections may have occurred in the western part of the US in mid-December last year.
The state of Washington was where the first patient in the US was diagnosed with coronavirus infection by the CDC on Jan 20. The state reported at least 165,000 confirmed cases as of Dec 1, with more than 2,770 deaths.
Antibodies were also found in 67 samples collected from Massachusetts, Michigan, Wisconsin or Iowa, and Connecticut or Rhode Island.
The Wall Street Journal said the findings significantly strengthen evidence suggesting the virus was spreading around the world well before public health authorities and researchers became aware, upending initial thinking about how early and quickly it emerged.
Researchers found the virus, for example, in a retrospective analysis of a specimen from a patient who was hospitalized in France on Dec 27, 2019 — weeks before the first infections were confirmed in France on Jan 24 — according to the Wall Street Journal.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency is committed to doing everything it can to find the origins of the novel coronavirus, as it can help the world prevent future outbreaks, but he urged countries not to politicize the hunt.
“What has been a barrier and trying to derail us from what we have been doing scientifically was the politicization of the study of the origin of the virus from some quarters,” Tedros said at a daily briefing in Geneva on Nov 30.
Chinese experts have called for the international community to stop politicizing the scientific issue or blaming each other.
UN General Assembly President Volkan Bozkir on Dec 2 called for joint efforts to fight misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19.
“Aside from the virus and its impacts, another adversary has been plaguing our response: misinformation and disinformation. COVID-19 is a communications crisis. It is not simply a pandemic. It is an ‘infodemic’. And this has cost lives,” said Bozkir.
Misinformation and disinformation can lead to lack of diagnostic tests, poor observance of public health measures and lack of immunization, he told a virtual event for the sharing of best practices to respond to an infodemic, which was organized by the permanent mission of Australia to the United Nations, together with the permanent missions of France, India, Indonesia and Latvia.
Misinformation and disinformation are not new concepts or new behaviors. But their existence in the context of COVID-19 has sharpened the risks, as well as the collective resolve to respond, he said.
It is clear that to address this issue, joint efforts by multiple stakeholders, including governments, international organizations, academia, and technology and social media companies are required, said Bozkir. Journalists and media workers also have a crucial role in helping the public make informed decisions. Member states must support journalists and media workers so they can do their jobs throughout the pandemic, he said.
Given recent developments, it is likely that the world will see several viable COVID-19 vaccines in the coming months. However, these welcome advancements will only work if people have confidence to use them, he said. “Building vaccine confidence and countering disinformation is in our collective interest.”
An international team of experts will begin the study from Wuhan to know what took place, and based on the findings there, to see if there are other avenues that must be explored, the WHO chief said.
The WHO said the first cases in Wuhan are believed to date from the beginning of December.
But “where an epidemic is first detected does not necessarily reflect where it started”, the world agency said in a November report.
More evidence and academic studies examining the origin of COVID-19 have come out, indicating that the city of Wuhan in Central China, where the first cases were reported in January, should not necessarily be the origin of the virus, according to latest media reports.
German virologist Alexander Kekule said on a ZDF media program on Nov 26 that the virus rampant around the world is not from the provincial capital of Hubei, but a mutation from northern Italy.
Kekule, who is director of the Institute for Biosecurity Research and director of the Institute for Medical Microbiology at Martin Luther University in Halle, Germany, explained that the Italian strain, called the “G” mutant, exhibits genetic mutations, being likely more contagious than the variant found in Wuhan.
More than 99 percent of COVID-19 cases can be genetically traced back to the Italian variant and even the current cases in China are reimported from Europe and the rest of the world, German news agency Weser Courier cited the virologist as saying.
The pandemic starting shot was fired in northern Italy, with Italy’s long ignorance of the warnings from China and lack of countermeasures to blame; otherwise the original virus could have been brought under control, according to the expert.
Most researchers think the virus originated in bats, but how it jumped to people is unknown.
A study released by the National Cancer Institute in Milan indicated that the coronavirus may have been circulating in Italy since September 2019.
If true, it would mean that the virus was present in Italy three months before it was first reported in China in December 2019, and five months before the first official case was recorded in Italy on Feb 21.
The study published earlier in November in scientific magazine Tumori Journal found coronavirus antibodies in 11.6 percent of 959 asymptomatic people enrolled in a prospective lung cancer screening trial between September 2019 and March 2020.
“Our results indicate that SARS-CoV-2 circulated in Italy earlier than the first official COVID-19 cases were diagnosed in Lombardy, even long before the first official reports from the Chinese authorities, casting new light on the onset and spread of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the Italian researchers said in a yet to be peer reviewed Nov 11 report.
The northern region of Lombardy, whose capital Milan is where pandemic instances emerged in late February, had previously reported an unusually high number of cases of severe flu and pneumonia in the last quarter of 2019, in a sign that COVID-19 may have circulated earlier than previously thought.
The Canadian Global Television Network’s Global News said the new research in Italy adds another layer to the mystery that has so far eluded scientists.
Sasha Bernatsky, senior scientist at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, called the study “very interesting and provocative”, but said it was inconclusive.
“Unfortunately, we have yet to really understand the antibody response to COVID and how durable it is,” she told Global News.
Apart from Italy, there have also been other reports about the virus being discovered elsewhere earlier in 2019. Spanish virologists discovered traces of the novel coronavirus in a sample of Barcelona wastewater collected in March 2019, nine months prior to the outbreak in China.
In Brazil, a study detected the coronavirus in human sewage, in samples collected in November 2019.
“This virus lived in animals and at some point passed to humans. It’s hard to say when and where this happened. It’s being investigated. Viruses can be found in wastewater. But nothing can be said specifically,” said Melita Vujnovic, representative of the World Health Organization to Russia, in an interview with Russian news agency RIA Novosti.
Tom Jefferson, a scientist at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine in the United Kingdom, said the novel coronavirus has existed worldwide and broke out whenever and wherever favorable conditions occurred rather than starting in China.
Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies program, said at a press conference on Nov 27 that the UN agency has been working with scientists worldwide and the organization will take every detection in France, Spain and Italy very seriously, and will examine each and every one of them.
Xinhua contributed to this story.
