By Professor Martin Neil September 11, 2023 READ

THE first victim of what became known as Covid-19 was ‘Patient Zero’, whose case was recorded on December 26, 2019, in Wuhan, China. He was admitted to hospital with respiratory symptoms including fever, dizziness and a cough. Patient Zero was relatively young and without significant health problems, yet he was subjected to a battery of tests, including genetic sequencing of fluid from his airways. We are told this led to the discovery of a new coronavirus subsequently dubbed SARS-CoV-2. As described in the seminal paper in Nature from February 3, 2020, the clinical features of the illness of the alleged Patient Zero, from whom the genome of the ‘novel virus’ was said to have been sequenced, are quite typical of regular bacterial pneumonia. Given that he showed no unusual symptoms, clearly this was not a routine medical response to what looks like a typical respiratory infection.