A turning point in coronavirus research: Has the woman who first fell ill been exposed?

November 18, 2021   

A study published in the New York Times and the prestigious journal Science found that the first case of a coronavirus patient was at the seafood market in Wuhan - and was most likely one of the vendors there.

The study - published by Erez Lin in Israel Hayom - effectively refutes the World Health Organization's claim that the first patient was an accountant a few kilometers away from the market in the city of Wuhan. The study's lead researcher, Michael Verrobay, who works at the University of Arizona, examined the data published in various journals and in videos in the Chinese media since the beginning of the epidemic. He found that the vendor at the seafood market, known as the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, was indeed infected with the virus and worked in the market during the outbreak of the epidemic. The first confirmed patient, if indeed she is the one according to the new study, is a woman named Wei Guixian who was diagnosed with the disease on December 11, 2019. The World Health Organization also documented a case of a woman who fell ill on that date that was linked to the market. As early as late December 2019, they noticed in the city of Wuhan that there was a higher than usual incidence of an unknown pneumonia in people who worked in the market, which has almost no air exchange. But a WHO mission in January 2020 concluded that the first patient was an accountant who had never been to the area. The man, identified only as Chen, had no connection to the market and lived a few miles away. However, the new study suggests that he actually only became ill on December 16, according to the doctors who treated him, and that the original claim that he had supposedly fallen ill on December 8 stemmed from a dental visit, and that he had not been suffering from COVID-19 at the time.