Covid-19 patient 1: woman who worked in the market

Washington. The first case of Covid-19 identified in the Chinese city of Wuhan, presented as such by a report from the World Health Organization (WHO), actually dates from a few days later, a senior scientist claims in a published article. Thursday in the prestigious journal Science.

Instead of corresponding to a man who had never been to the Wuhan animal market, the first case is that of a saleswoman who worked in this market, according to virologist Michael Worobey, and was detected on December 11, 2019.

These data, as well as the analysis of the first cases of Covid-19 in the city, clearly tip the balance towards an animal origin of the virus, Worobey said.

Worobey himself belonged to a group of 15 experts who published an article in the journal Science in mid-May asking for serious consideration of the hypothesis of a laboratory leak in Wuhan.

Now, he notes, his research “provides strong evidence in favor of the origin of the pandemic from a live animal” from this market.

Questioned by the New York Times, Peter Daszak, who was among the experts sent by the WHO to Wuhan in January 2021, admitted that “the date of December 8 was a mistake.”