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New study says Covid was in US in Dec 2019
The development came at a time when the US death toll from the Covid-19 pandemic surpassed 600,000, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.
At least seven people in five US states were infected with the coronavirus weeks before those states reported their first cases, a new government study has shown.
The development came at a time when the US death toll from the Covid-19 pandemic surpassed 600,000, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.
In the study, participants who reported antibodies against Sars-CoV-2 were likely exposed to the virus at least several weeks before their samples were taken, as the antibodies do not appear until about two weeks after a person has been infected, the researchers said.
The results build on findings from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study that suggested the virus may have been circulating in the US in late December 2019, before the first Covid-19 case was detected on January 19, 2020. The positive samples came from Illinois, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and were part of a study of more than 24,000 blood samples taken for a National Institutes of Health research programme between January 2 and March 18, 2020.
The WHO chief Tedros Ghebreyesus warned on Monday that Covid-19 was moving faster than the vaccines, and said the G7’s vow to share a billion doses with poorer nations was simply not enough.
Meanwhile, AstraZeneca said its antibody cocktail was only 33% effective in preventing Covid symptoms in people exposed to the virus as part of a study to find a way to tackle the virus.
In Pakistan, taking a cue from Punjab province, the Sindh government has announced it will block the mobile SIM cards of those who refuse to take the Covid-19 vaccines, according to a media report on Tuesday.
