Covid-19 disease was spreading in Germany in December 2019: Study

Researchers have confirmed that a 71-year-old man from Germany was suffering from Covid-19 disease in December 2019. China made Covid-19 disease official on December 31, 2019.

However, a day before doctors in Berlin treated a septuagenarian man with Covid-like conditions.

The unidentified man was hospitalised with respiratory symptoms on December, 30, 2019, according to the team from Charite-Universitatsmedizin Berlin.

Writing in a paper reported in the Journal of Medical Case Reports, the doctors said the patient was presented in a "poor" condition -- with an elevated heart rate, blood pressure and a fever.

He had preexisting diabetes mellitus type II, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia, and was overweight.

He also had a history of smoking and suffered a stroke in the past. However, he had not taken a trip abroad recently, the doctors said.

Four days after admission, the patient showed new neurological symptoms.

"Chest computed tomography findings suggested an atypical pneumonia," they said, adding that the patient was discharged home on January 28, 2020 with a severe persistent neurological deficit.

He died in April 2020.

Now, armed with the vast knowledge of the deadly disease, the team re-examined his case to find a Covid-like pattern.

"Retrospectively, the infiltrates show the characteristic appearance and distribution pattern of Covid-19 pneumonia," they said.

"Meta-analyses have shown that chest computed tomography has a sensitivity of over 90 per cent in the case of patients experiencing symptoms of Covid-19, which was the case with our patient. His chest computed tomography findings match the typical appearance of Covid-19," the doctors said.

"This case suggests that Covid-19 was already spreading in Germany in December 2019," the doctors said.

Previous studies have shown evidence that Covid was spreading in European nations France and Italy as of December 2019.

Other evidence that showed SARS-CoV-2 was already spreading in Europe in December 2019 include detection of SARS-CoV-2-RNA in wastewater samples in northern Italy as early as December 18, 2019.

In France, RT-PCR was performed retrospectively on stored respiratory samples from December 2019. In one case dated 27 December 2019, the diagnosis of Covid-19 was confirmed.

While Beijing has insisted that the virus first began spreading mid-December, leaked documents from the Chinese government indicate that the officials were aware of some Covid cases as early as November 2019.

In 2021 a Chinese whistleblower claimed that the first Covid-19 outbreak took place in October 2019 at a military tournament in Wuhan -- two months before China notified the world about the deadly virus.

--IANS

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