Indications coronavirus was already circulating in Spain by mid-February
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A team of scientists from Madrid’s Carlos III Health Institute has analyzed the first 28 genomes of the virus in Spain.
The trail of the errors does not lead to a single “patient zero,” but confirms that there were a “multitude of entries” by people who had been infected in other countries during the month of February, according to the bioinformatic specialist Francisco Díez, the first signatory of the study.
On February 23, Fernando Simón, the director of the Health Ministry’s Coordination Center for Health Alerts, stated that “the virus is not in Spain, nor is the disease being transmitted, nor do we currently have any cases.” But it would appear that by that point the virus was already spreading unimpeded.
Díez’s team has studied the nearly 1,600 complete virus genomes read by the international scientific community up until the end of March. The analysis shows that the 28 Spanish genomes belong to the three main virus families identified in the rest of the world, which are named S, G and V.
The new analysis, which has been published in an open repository and has not been externally reviewed, suggests that the common ancestor of the 1,600 viruses was in the Chinese city of Wuhan around November 24.
Thirteen of the Spanish genomes belong to the S family and 11 are linked to a prior case detected on February 1 in Shanghai.
The first three S viruses identified in Spain are from samples taken on February 26 and 27 in Valencia. A week before, 2,500 soccer fans from the region had traveled to Milan to see Atalanta play Valencia, an event that was described as a “biological bomb” by the mayor of Bergamo, Giorgio Gori.
However, genetic analysis suggests that the coronavirus from the S family was already circulating in Spain, around February 14. Another group of half a dozen cases in Madrid suggest that the G family was already circulating in the capital around February 18.
The study allows for the invisible and explosive dissemination of the virus to be seen.
The case of Shanghai on February 1 is apparently related to another two samples taken in France on February 25 and 26, another in Madrid on March 2, another in Chile on March 3, another in the United States on March 4, another in Georgia on March 8 and another in Brazil on March 16. The probable transmission routes become more complicated until they form a web on the world map. Díez believes that this specific branch of the virus went from Spain to another six countries.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, the Spanish health ministry said that 440 people died from the coronavirus in the previous 24 hours, which brought total fatalities to 22,157.
That figure is slightly higher than the previous day when 435 people died. The number of diagnosed cases rose to 213,024 from 208,389 the day before.
