31 cluster On December 31, 2019, Chinese authorities reported a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China Emergence of another pathogenic zoonotic HCoV was suspected, and by January 10, 2020, researchers from the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center & School of Public Health and their collaborators released a full genomic sequence of 2019-nCoV to public databases, exemplifying prompt data sharing in outbreak response. Preliminary analyses indicate that 2019-nCoV has some amino acid homology to SARS-CoV and may be able to use ACE2 as a receptor. This has important implications for predicting pandemic potential moving forward. The situation with 2019-nCoV is evolving rapidly, with the case count currently growing into the hundreds. Human-to-human transmission of 2019-nCoV occurs, as evidenced by the infection of 15 health care practitioners in a Wuhan hospital. The extent, if any, to which such transmission might lead to a sustained epidemic remains an open and critical question. So far, it appears that the fatality rate of 2019-nCoV is lower than that of SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV; however, the ultimate scope and effects of the outbreak remain to be seen. france "...the disease was already spreading among the French population at the end of December 2019." WHO urges retests of old samples after France traces earlier Covid-19 case Issued on: 06/05/2020 - 16:42 The World Health Organization has urged countries around the world to follow the lead of French doctors who, through retesting old flu samples, found that Covid-19 was present in France a month earlier than it was thought to have spread to Europe. French doctors in the northern Paris suburbs, one of the country’s hardest-hit areas, determined that a man they treated for pneumonia in December had been suffering from the coronavirus. Published Tuesday in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, the study says SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, was present in France nearly a month before the first official cases were confirmed on 24 January.

18 italy Coronavirus was already in Italy by December, waste water study finds The National Institute of Health (ISS) said water from Milan and Turin showed genetic virus traces on 18 December. It adds to evidence from other countries that the virus may have been circulating much earlier than thought. Chinese officials confirmed the first cases at the end of December. Italy's first case was in mid-February.