Coronavirus started spreading in New York in February, most cases from Europe
Washington, AFP. The corona virus first began to spread in February in New York, US, battling the corona virus epidemic. One scientist claimed that it had started spreading before widespread testing began, and most of the local specimens identified so far are from Europe.
Geneticist Adriana Hegue of NYU Grossman School of Medicine, who led the research, told AFP that detecting the chain of the virus’s spread would help policymakers tackle the problem. He said that it is very interesting that most of the local samples are from Europeans. This is because the entire focus was on stopping travel from China.
He said New York physicians were treating cases of mysterious pneumonia before large-scale trials began. Heguy and his team examined the samples taken from the nose of 75 patients from three hospitals in New York. They reported that all organisms change over time, but RNA viruses such as SARS-COV-2 present some errors in each cycle. This is why influenza viruses differ in every season and new vaccines are required.
The first patient he studied had no relevant travel history, meaning he was infected by someone in his community. Heguy said that based on the specific changes in his virus, we can basically tell that it came from England.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the number of corona virus-infected patients has crossed 1.5 million globally, while a total of more than 88,000 people have died so far. In addition, three million people infected with the virus have been cured worldwide.
