CORONAVIRUS PATIENT ZERO AND VACCINES RACE

 It wasn't until late December that Chinese officials realized they had a new virus on their hands but even then, China's government clamped down on sharing information about it with the public, according to The Wall Street Journal.
A person believed to be the first ever human infected with COVID-19 has broken her silence, Wei Guixian is a 57 year old seafood merchant at the Huanan Market in Wuhan where the virus is suspected to have first made the jump from a bat to human, she described how she first started to feel ill on December 10, believing she had caught a cold or maybe the flu. "I felt a bit tired but not as tired as previous years, every winter, I always suffer from the flu, so i thought it was the flu" she said. The next day she walked to a small local clinic and got the usual treatment and an injection, before going back to work, the first steps in a global pandemic that has infected over half a million and killed more than 25,000 so far. When her symptoms persisted, she sought a second opinion at Wuhan's The Eleventh Hospital, but doctors there were also stumped, she said "The doctor at the Eleventh Hospital could not figure out what was wrong with me and gave me pills" When theses didn't help either, she returned to the first clinic to ask for more injections, she added "By then i felt a lot worse and very uncomfortable, i didn't have the strength or energy". Finally on December 16, she went to one of the city's main hospitals, Wuhan Union Hospital, where she discovered she was not the only one from Huanan with the ruthless illness, as her condition deteriorated and she clung to consciousness, doctors figured out that they were dealing with something completely new and that almost all of the cases could be traced back to the seafood market. Wei was among the first 27 to be diagnosed with Coronavirus, 24 of whom worked in or had visited the same place, they were finally placed in quarantine, Wei who eventually recovered and left hospital in January, believes she caught the infection from a toilet she shared with wild meat sellers at the market, vendors on either side of her live shrimp stall caught the disease as did members of her family, Wei criticized the Chinese government for failing to confirm the outbreak until early January, had they acted sooner a lot fewer people would have died.
An other post said, the first case of the novel Coronavirus emerged on November 17, according to Chinese government data reviewed by the South China Morning Post, the post said the data it reviewed, which has not been made public, suggested that the virus was first contracted by a 55 year old man from China's Hubei province, but as the newspaper noted, the evidence is not conclusive, the identity of "patient zero" the first human case of the virus has still not been confirmed and it's possible that the data set isn't complete. Chinese health authorities reported the illness caused by the Coronavirus to the World Health Organization was on December 31, a team of researchers later published evidence that the patient zero was showing symptoms on December 8, the date of the first confirmed case. Other research published in the Lancet in January found that the first person to test positive was exposed to the virus on December 1.

The fact that researchers have continually hiked back the likely date of the earliest infection means there still may not be enough evidence to identify "Patient zero" but the new Chinese government data reported by the Past Sharpens what we know. Research published last month by a team of infectious disease researchers from China found that We-Chat users were using terms related to symptoms of the novel Coronavirus more than two weeks before officials confirmed the first case, Business Insider's Holly Secon wrote that the findings might indicate that the Coronavirus started circulating weeks before the first cases were officially diagnosed and reported. The research lends further support to the finding that the earliest case of COVID-19 did indeed originate in mid-November.
As officials try to identify patient zero, the new government data reported by the Post provides clues about the emergence and spread of a virus that has thrown the world into tumult "We don't know who the very first patient zero was, presumably in Wuhan and that leaves a lot of unanswered questions about how the outbreak started and how it initially spread" Sarah Borwein, a doctor at Hong Kong's Central Health Medical Practice, told the Post last month, for experts, finding patient zero is not simply a matter of digging through data and conducting research, it's a race against the clock, as the number of infections increases, it becomes more difficult to identify that person and the areas that have been exposed to the virus the longest. "We do feel uncomfortable obviously when we diagnose a patient with the illness and we can't work out where it came from, the containment activities are less effective" Dale Fisher, the chair of The WHO's Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network told Reuters last month.
The United States overtook China in terms of most reported cases, by Friday morning the US had recorded 93,000 to china's stalling tally of 81,000, China's number of fatalities 3,292 is still well above the US 1,382 although numbers in the US are currently rising at a much more rapid pace.
When asked about the comparable figures at his latest press briefing on Thursday, President Donald Trump suggested China's numbers were not to be trusted.
The first human trial to evaluate a candidate vaccine against the new Coronavirus has begun in Seattle, US health officials said Monday March 16, raising hopes in the global fight against the epidemic but it may be another year to 18 months before it becomes available, once it has passed more trial phases to prove it works and is safe. The vaccine called mRNA-1273 and was developed by US National Institute of Health NIH scientists and collaborators at biotechnology company Moderna, which is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The NIH said "The open-labl trial will enroll 45 healthy adult volunteers ages 18 to 55 years over approximately 6 weeks, the first participant received the investigational vaccine the same day March 16" Funding was also provided by the Oslo-based Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations CEPI. There are currently no approved vaccines or treatments against the Coronavirus disease, Anthony Fauci head of infectious diseases at the NIH said, "Finding a safe and effective vaccine to prevent infection with SARS-CoV-2 is an urgent public health priority" using the technical name of the virus that is believed to have originated in bats, this phase 1 study, launched in record speed, is an important first step toward achieving that goal, The Seattle trial will study the impact of different doses delivered by intramuscular injection in the upper arm, with participants monitored for side-effects like soreness or fever. Coronavirus are spherical and have spikes protruding from their surface, giving them a crown like appearance, the spike binds to human cells, allowing the virus to gain entry, The Moderna candidate vaccine carries the genetic information of this spike in a substance called "messenger RNA". Injecting human tissue with spike's messenger RNA makes it grow inside the body, thereby eliciting an immune response without having actually infected a person with the full blown virus. Pharmaceuticals and research labs around the world are racing to develop both treatments and vaccines to the new Coronavirus, an antiviral treatment called Remdesivir, made by US based Gilead Sciences, is already in the final stages of clinical trials in Asia and doctors in China have reported it has proven effective in fighting the disease, but only randomized trials allow scientists to know for sure whether it really helps or whether patients would have recovered without it. Another US pharma called Inovio, which is creating a DNA-based vaccine, has said it will enter clinical trials next month, Regeneron  Pharmaceuticals, which is an American biotechnology company, is trying to isolate Coronavirus fighting antibodies that can be administered intravenously to confer temporary immunity and hopes to start human trials by summer. According to The World Health Organization, 80% of COVID-19 cases are mild, 14% are severe and about 5% result are critical, resulting in severe respiratory illness that cause the lungs to fill with fluid which in turn prevents oxygen from reaching organs, patients with mild cases recover in a week or two while severe cases can take six or more weeks, recent estimates suggest about 1% of all infected people die.