Of the 24 patients, one tested positive for COVID-19, and the findings of the study were published in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents. The hospital immediately contacted the man to inform him of the diagnosis.

The doctors from the Groupe Hospitalier Paris Seine in Sain-Denis said that a sample taken from the 42-year-old fishmonger Amirouche Hammar, who was admitted to the emergency room, tested positive for the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

Retesting old samples has pushed the timeline for the global pandemic in Europe back by about a month, which makes a big difference in its outcome. Knowing who was the first case is essential in understanding how the virus spreads. However, it is too early to know if the patient is France’s “patient zero.”

Dr. Yves Cohen, the head of resuscitation at the Avicenne and Jean Verdier hospitals, retested samples from 24 patients who were treated in December and January. These patients had tested negative for flu before the coronavirus disease even evolved into a pandemic.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19), formerly known as the novel coronavirus infection, was first reported in late December 2019 in Wuhan City in China. Many health experts believe that the virus had spread way before it was identified as the culprit for many pneumonia-like diseases. Now, a French doctor says that the coronavirus reached France back in December when it admitted a pneumonia patient into hospital.

The hospital in France identified the country’s earliest-known COVID-19 case on Dec. 27, 2019, as a man who was suspected of having pneumonia but actually had the novel coronavirus. The report means that the virus had reached Europe way before it was first reported on the continent in January.

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200505/First-French-COVID-19-case-was-in-December.aspx

William Moss, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said it would be “a very obvious decision” for the US to donate all its doses of AstraZeneca since that vaccine is not even authorized for use in the US. Another promising option would be to donate Johnson & Johnson’s doses in spades. “The advantage of getting that to countries like India is that it’s a single dose, and the cold-chain requirement is less stringent,” he said.

Moss, Prasad, and Spencer all argued that the US should also send Pfizer and Moderna doses to countries like India — even if contractual language says doses manufactured in the US have to be given to Americans. They want the Biden administration to ignore that language, given the scale of humanitarian crisis we’re witnessing.

“We have a split screen. The US is looking great — everyone can get a vaccine! At the same time, in India, Southeast Asia, everywhere, I have health care worker friends who may not see a vaccine until 2022 or 2023,” said Craig Spencer, a professor of emergency medicine at Columbia University. Nearly a dozen countries are “vaccine deserts” where nobody, not even doctors treating Covid-19 patients, has gotten a single shot.

Biden has promised to do that. In April, he pledged to send 60 million AstraZeneca doses to virus-ravaged countries. But it’s now mid-May, and doses are still sitting in a stockpile. Although they have to pass a federal safety review before being exported, and it’s obviously crucial to ensure safety, experts still say Biden’s plan to donate these doses over the next several months will be too little, too late.

The US can afford to give much more, much faster. After all, roughly 73 million doses are already sitting in the US stockpile, according to CDC data. By July, Duke University researchers estimate, the US will likely have at least 300 million excess doses — and that estimate is assuming that the US will retain enough doses to vaccinate the vast majority of children. In other words, every eligible or soon-to-be-eligible American could get vaccinated, and there would still be 300 million doses left over — practically enough to give an extra dose to every person in the country.

America’s vaccine surplus is staggering. It’s a moral outrage to not share faster with a virus-ravaged world.

The contrast is growing more galling by the day.

In the US, more than half of adults have received at least one vaccine dose, Covid-19 transmission is the lowest it’s been in 11 months, and many Americans are partying and traveling and reveling in their new vaccinated status.
Meanwhile, thousands of unvaccinated people in less wealthy countries — from India to Brazil — are dying every day amid overwhelming surges of Covid-19. Delhi’s crematoriums have run out of room. Sao Paolo has resorted to exhuming old graves to make space for new bodies.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22432536/biden-donate-vaccine-doses-india-brazil

“The levels of SARS-CoV-2 were low but were positive,” research leader Albert Bosch was quoted as saying by the university.

The research has been submitted for a peer review.

Dr Joan Ramon Villalbi of the Spanish Society for Public Health and Sanitary Administration told Reuters it was still early to draw definitive conclusions.

“When it’s just one result, you always want more data, more studies, more samples to confirm it and rule out a laboratory error or a methodological problem,” he said.

There was the potential for a false positive due to the virus’ similarities with other respiratory infections.

“But it’s definitely interesting, it’s suggestive,” Villalbi said.

The University of Barcelona team, who had been testing waste water since mid-April this year to identify potential new outbreaks, decided to also run tests on older samples.

They first found the virus was present in Barcelona on Jan. 15, 2020, 41 days before the first case was officially reported there.

Then they ran tests on samples taken between January 2018 and December 2019 and found the presence of the virus genome in one of them, collected on March 12, 2019.

Spanish virologists have found traces of the novel coronavirus in a sample of Barcelona waste water collected in March 2019, nine months before the COVID-19 disease was identified in China, the University of Barcelona said on Friday.

The discovery of virus genome presence so early in Spain, if confirmed, would imply the disease may have appeared much earlier than the scientific community thought.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-science-idUSKBN23X2HQ

But some studies hinted at the possibility that the virus had been crossing borders long before then. One study found coronavirus RNA, or genetic material, in sewage samples taken on Dec. 18, 2019, in the cities of Milan and Turin. Another found that a patient in Paris who was treated in an intensive care unit in December 2019 had COVID-19, Live Science previously reported. Another analysis from Harvard University looked at satellite images and found that traffic at hospitals in Wuhan and online searches for COVID-19 symptoms were elevated compared with normal starting in the late summer and early fall of 2019. That suggested that the coronavirus may have been attacking us long before we knew its name.

To further clarify the early movements of the virus, a group of researchers analyzed blood samples from people in Italy who were enrolled in a prospective lung cancer screening trial between September 2019 and March 2020. They looked for antibodies specific to the receptor binding domain (RBD) — the dock on the coronavirus' spike protein that it uses to latch onto and invade human cells.

The World Health Organization's China office first picked up the scent of a mysterious cluster of pneumonia cases in the city of Wuhan from local media statements on Dec. 31 and rang the alarm bells at the start of the new year, according to the WHO's timeline. Scientists later traced the first known case of COVID-19 in Wuhan back to Nov. 17, 2019, Live Science previously reported.

But the actual pandemic timeline — from the moment the virus hopped from animals to humans to when it first crossed international borders — remains murky. Italy, one of the worst-hit countries in Europe during the first wave of the virus, recorded its first local case on Feb. 20 in Lombardy, a region in northern Italy. That case suggested that the virus had been circulating in Italy since January of this year, according to the new study published on Nov. 11 in the Tumori Journal.

The new coronavirus may have been circulating in Italy since September 2019, months before the first official case was detected in the country, according to a new study from Italy. But public health experts say that more analysis is needed for that timeline to be confirmed.

https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-circulating-italy-earlier-thought.html

In an email response to the Global Times on Friday, Fairfax County Health Department said there had been an established etiology for the outbreak of the illness. "Testing of specimens collected showed several bacteria, including Haemophilus influenzae (H. flu) and rhinovirus," it wrote, saying these were "the cause of the common cold."

Nonetheless, this epidemic has recently led to speculation on its probable relevance to USAMRIID on US social media aimed at the COVID-19 pandemic. A Twitter user named "The Paper" posted in March that his bet of the virus escaping from the institute was "a 50 percent or higher chance."

More suspicion and blame on USAMRIID occurred when an unprecedented e-cigarette or vaping product use associated lung injury (EVALI) broke out in its surrounding areas in August 2019.

According to researchers who examined samples of lung tissue from 17 EVALI patients, all the samples implied the people "had been exposed to toxic chemicals," reported the New York Times in October.

Days before the institution's temporary shutdown in 2019, a respiratory illness was reported on June 30 at a community one hour's drive away. The Greenspring Retirement Community in Fairfax County, Virginia, had had 63 infected cases of the disease and three deaths by July 15, said local health authorities.

The US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland, is causing wide anger for its reopening in April regardless of the US and global citizens' opposition after months of shutdown for reported "structural defects."

The public doubts the possible link between the institute and a series of deadly disease outbreaks in this country, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic

COVAX, the U.N.-backed program to ship COVID-19 vaccines worldwide, is aimed at helping low- and middle-income countries get access. A few of the countries, though, including Chad, have expressed concerns about receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine through COVAX for fear it might not protect as well against a variant first seen in South Africa.

Chad is expected to get some Pfizer doses next month if it can put in place the cold storage facilities needed to keep that vaccine safe in a country where temperatures soar each day to 43.5 degrees Celsius (110 degrees Fahrenheit).

Some of the last countries also took more time to meet the requirements for receiving doses, including signing indemnity waivers with manufacturers and having distribution plans in place.

“Delays and shortages of vaccine supplies are driving African countries to slip further behind the rest of the world in the COVID-19 vaccine rollout and the continent now accounts for only 1% of the vaccines administered worldwide,” WHO warned Thursday.

And in places where there are no vaccines, there’s also the chance that new and concerning variants could emerge, said Gian Gandhi, UNICEF’s COVAX coordinator for Supply Division.

“So we should all be concerned about any lack of coverage anywhere in the world,” Gandhi said, urging higher-income countries to donate doses to the nations that are still waiting.

While wealthier nations have stockpiled vaccines for their citizens, many poorer countries are still scrambling to secure doses. A few, like Chad, have yet to receive any.

The World Health Organization says nearly a dozen countries — many of them in Africa — are still waiting to get vaccines. Those last in line on the continent along with Chad are Burkina Faso, Burundi, Eritrea and Tanzania.

As a result, the U.S. government laid claim not only to vast quantities of finished COVID-19 vaccines but also to vaccine components and equipment all along the supply chain, according to a Reuters review of more than a dozen contracts involving some major suppliers.

US officials have defended their use of the DPA. “Making vaccines requires a great deal of specialised materials, and there’s just not enough to go around,” one administration official said this week. “There’s just more global manufacturing happening everywhere in the world than suppliers can currently support.”

Separately, the US has a large stockpile of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine doses it bought up early in the development process. Until recently, it rebuffed requests from other countries to share those jabs.

There is no formal export ban on vaccines or vaccine components, such as syringes, vials and filters. Companies manufacturing vaccines, or items needed by jab makers elsewhere in the world, are free to export them. 

However, Washington has used a wartime power known as the Defense Production Act to compel private companies to fulfil its contracts ahead of other orders. This has prompted manufacturers elsewhere in the world, like the Serum Institute in India, to complain of not being able to buy items they would normally import from the US. In normal times, the US is the top global exporter of syringes and needles, according to the OECD.

Despite leading the world in Covid-19 vaccine production, the US has so far exported very few shots, prompting complaints that Washington has failed to do its bit to help battle the pandemic globally.

The day after taking office in January, President Joe Biden enacted wartime powers to help boost domestic medical supplies, including vaccines. The move has since been described by critics as an “embargo”, hampering supplies in some of the worst-hit countries by limiting the availability of US-made vaccine ingredients.

Severe and sudden allergic reactions after COVID-19 vaccinations continue to be extremely rare, federal health officials say. Over 245 million shots were administered in the United States from mid-December through April. During that time, the federal surveillance system received 4,178 reports of death, or about 2-5 per million vaccinations. The existence of a report does not necessarily mean a vaccine caused the death, officials say.

In March, Jones said the family decided to get a private autopsy because the state did not perform one. At the time, her relatives hoped it would shed more light on what happened to Keyes, a church minister and supervisor for the Middle Peninsula Northern Neck Community Services Board.

Keyes was treated at the site with epinephrine shots in her leg and arm and medicine through an oxygen mask, according to the report. When medics transferred her to a stretcher to get her in an ambulance, she became unresponsive.

The state’s investigation, which did not include an autopsy, ruled she died naturally — of complications arising from hypertensive cardiovascular disease and COVID-19, according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Other significant conditions, it said, were Type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, obesity and hypoventilation syndrome, a breathing disorder.

“The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner is unable to comment on the death of Ms. Keyes other than to confirm the cause and manner of death,” chief medical examiner Dr. William Gormley said in a statement released to The Virginian-Pilot on Friday. “Ms. Keyes did not experience an anaphylactic reaction. We continue to offer our heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of Ms. Keyes.”

The state’s investigation into a woman’s death shortly after receiving a coronavirus vaccine ruled that the shot did not contribute to the fatality but she had COVID-19 and suffered other medical complications.

The private investigation, which included an autopsy, indicated negative COVID-19 test results and evidence of a blood clot that investigators believed was linked to the administration of a COVID-19 vaccine, she said.

Keyes received a first dose of Pfizer vaccine Jan. 30 and died shortly after at VCU Tappahannock Hospital. A report documenting her case in the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System said she began having trouble breathing in the parking lot of her vaccination site about 20 minutes after getting the shot. She then began vomiting every 20 to 30 seconds.

“Many countries have devoted exceptional effort to measuring the pandemic’s toll, but our analysis shows how difficult it is to accurately track a new and rapidly spreading infectious disease,” Murray said. “We hope that today’s report will encourage governments to identify and address gaps in their COVID-19 mortality reporting, so that they can more accurately direct pandemic resources.” Moving forward, IHME’s COVID-19 modeling, which forecasts the potential course of the pandemic over the next several months, will be based on these estimates of total COVID-19 deaths. IHME’s modeling is updated weekly and can be accessed at covid19.healthdata.org.

Many deaths from COVID-19 go unreported because countries only report deaths that occur in hospitals or in patients with a confirmed infection. In many places, weak health reporting systems and low access to health care magnify this challenge.

IHME’s analysis found that the largest number of unreported deaths occurred in countries that have had the largest epidemics to-date. However, some countries with relatively smaller epidemics saw a large increase in the death rate when accounting for unreported deaths. This analysis shows that they may be at greater risk for a wider epidemic than previously thought.

SEATTLE—Globally, COVID-19 has caused approximately 6.9 million deaths, more than double what official numbers show, according to a new analysis by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington School of Medicine. IHME found that COVID-19 deaths are significantly underreported in almost every country. The updated analysis shows that the United States has had more COVID-19 deaths to-date than any other country, a total of more than 905,000.

http://www.healthdata.org/news-release/covid-19-has-caused-69-million-deaths-globally-more-double-what-official-reports-show

Macron, however, defended Europe’s record in sending doses abroad, saying it had been “the most generous” of developed countries so far -- and that it was more important to not block exports and to donate vaccines widely.

“What is the real issue right now? It is not really about intellectual property. You can give the intellectual property to laboratories that do not know how to produce it. They won’t produce tomorrow. The primary issue for vaccine solidarity is the donation of doses,” he said.

Macron said that the transfer of technology needed to produce the vaccine was also important.

The French president spoke after the US backed a temporary suspension of intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines.

A measure to allow countries to temporarily override patent rights for pandemic-related medical products, and thus make copycat vaccines, was proposed at the World Trade Organization by India and South Africa in October, and has since been backed by about 60 countries.

French president Emmanuel Macron said he was ready to discuss waiving patents for Covid-19 vaccines but hit out at america blocking the export of key ingredients and the vaccines themselves.

“Today, the Anglo-Saxons block lots of these ingredients and vaccines. Today 100 per cent of vaccines produced in the United States of America go to the American market,” Macron said as he arrived at a summit in Portugal on Friday.