Alex Christoforou
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
A shrimp peddler at the Chinese market where the coronavirus pandemic likely began has been identified as one of the first victims of the disease — and possibly “patient zero.”
The 57-year-old woman, identified by the Wall Street Journal as Wei Guixian, was the first person from the now-notorious Huanan market in Wuhan to test positive for the deadly bug.
She was at work Dec. 10 when she developed what she thought were cold symptoms, Chinese outlet The Paper reported. So she walked to a small local clinic for treatment and then went back to work — likely spreading the contagion.
“I felt a bit tired, but not as tired as previous years,” she told The Paper, according to a translation by news.com.au. “Every winter, I always suffer from the flu. So I thought it was the flu.”
She visited a local clinic on Dec. 11 and received an injection, but didn’t feel any better, so she went to the Eleventh Hospital in Wuhan.
“The doctor at the Eleventh Hospital could not figure out what was wrong with me and gave me pills,” Wei told the Chinese outlet — but those didn’t work either.
“By then I felt a lot worse and very uncomfortable,” Wei said. “I did not have the strength or energy.”
On Dec. 16, Wei went to Wuhan Union Hospital — one of the city’s biggest — to get checked out.
A doctor there described her illness as “ruthless” and told her several other people from the same market had already come in with similar symptoms.
A Dec. 31 statement from the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission revealed that Wei was among the first 27 patients to test positive for COVID-19, and one of 24 cases with direct links to the seafood market.
Wei, who has since recovered and left the hospital in January, said she thinks she contracted the infection from a market toilet in the market she shared with meat sellers and others, according to the Journal.
The vendors who worked on either side of Wei, along with one of her daughters, a niece and the niece’s husband, also caught the deadly bug, the paper reported.
“A lot fewer people would have died” in the country if the government had acted sooner, Wei told the Journal in February.
Wei may have been “patient zero” at the market, but it’s still unclear if she was the first person to ever contract the novel coronavirus in the country.
https://nypost.com/2020/03/27/shrimp-vendor-at-wuhan-market-may-be-coronavirus-patient-zero/
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
But there have been reports that there is patient who came in 15/11. I doubt this is accurate just lots of speculation.
Since when isn’t speculation proof positive?
Some Italians say that they spotted a Russian trawler dumping infected shrimp into the Bay of Naples.
Trump would have probably figured she was just shirking her duties and docked her a week’s pay. Biden would have probably asked to sniff her niece’s hair. 😉
I do not find the New York Post a very reliable source of news.
Even worse, the original claim came from WSJ, which is part of Rupert Murdoch’s media stable.
All US media is polluted with a venomous and viral lack of veritas.
PS: Bezos is short for Beelzebub
I won’t believe a word of it until I read it in The Economist
Alex, try this to compare https://youtu.be/Hren-R3MAZ8
There have also been reports of 2 people with zero connection to the seafood market, but who tested positive at the same time as this, making it extremely unlikely that this story is factual.
Completely Fake news taken from the new york post and news Australia. I have always known its not a good idea to trust theduran. It seems to be getting paid off by someone?
Me thinks so too. Couldn’t believe I was reading an article from the NY Post on here.
If you use the NYT as a source you are going to damage your credibility? And as I read in the comments it was in the WAPO first a now totally unreliable source? You should follow up and find out about what and why the CDC closed down Fort Detrick in the US which had “Clusters” of deaths in Nursing Homes just before it closed? Also the Vaping deaths which were in clusters and the autopsies showed similar “Ice” displays of those of the Corona Virus? This was before anything announced about China.
William Kierath.
Absolutely
American journalism has sunk so low, it thinks shedding snake scales are falling snow.
Why are you posting false narrative articles from the NY Post?
Nice anti-Chinese propaganda. Still no evidence that the woman was “patient zero”, only speculation. How could the Govt have acted sooner? No-one knew it was a new virus – she and the doctors thought it was seasonal flu. When Covid19 was identified, the govt moved quickly.
Now we wait for New York Post to report on Trump’s quick action in the US…