A woman Chinese doctor recalls treating her first case of COVID-19 in Wuhan

The deadly coronavirus which has overwhelmed China and the world was discovered in an elderly couple in December last year in Wuhan through a CT scan done by Zhang Jixian, a woman doctor, the official media reported on Friday, hailing her for alerting the authorities about the vicious virus.

Since its emergence, the virus which has so far killed at least 145,000 globally and infected over 2.1 million has become a source of concern and controversy as China is yet to reveal the details of its source or origin. In China alone, 4,632 people died of COVID-19 and 82,692 cases were reported.

On December 26, an elderly couple from a nearby community visited the Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, Zhang, a veteran respiratory doctor in a Wuhan hospital, recalled how the coronavirus, an alien pathogen facing mankind, emerged from a seemingly ordinary case in what was stated to be China's first official version of the timing of the discovery of the disease.

Since the virus came to light, there is a great deal of interest in the world about the zero case of the COVID-19 which could throw light on how it emerged from what is believed to an animal to human and then progressed into human to human transmission.

China faced criticism from the US and other countries for revealing too little about the virus which spread to Wuhan and the world like wildfire.

Throwing light on the first case, Zhang, director of the hospital's respiratory and critical care medicine department recalled that the symptoms of the old couple included fever, coughing and tiredness, which "looked like flu or common pneumonia."
Back then, Zhang could not know it was among the first medical reports of an epidemic that has "spread the fastest, caused the most extensive infections and been the hardest to contain since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949."