ski tourists may have brought coronavirusset to Denmark, a month before the first smittetilfælde was confirmed.
At the end of February was the first dane to be found infected with the coronavirus.
But several experts estimate that the virus may have been brought to Denmark, long before the first case was confirmed. It writes Berlingske.
When a group of danes towards the end of January came home from a skiing trip in Austria, showed several of them the symptoms of the coronavirus. None of them ended with being tested for the virus, even though they were sick.
Therefore, one can also not reject that they were infected and that Denmark therefore had its first coronatilfælde a month earlier than previously believed.
It assesses Lars Peter Nielsen, who has been the chief physician in clinical microbiology, and for a number of years has led The National Influenzalaboratorium at the Statens Serum Institute as well as been at the forefront of Danish virusforskning.
– It may well be true that the needs of Danish ski tourists were already infected in the middle of January.
China announced the discovery of SARS-CoV-2 31. december 2019 at the latest, but previous studies show that it has been in China long before, at least from the middle of november 2019 and probably longer.
– So there must just be one austrian bartender, who has been in China, or a chinese, that is taken on the skiing trip in Austria in december or January, ” says Lars Peter Nielsen to Berlingske.
He takes, however, some reservations. Lars Peter Nielsen suggests that there are up to 200 different luftvejsvirusser with very similar symptoms, and that there was relatively much influenza in Europe in the beginning of January.
A number of Danish experts agree with him that the virus may have been circulating in both Denmark and Europe, long before the first confirmed case.
the Group of possible infected danes, as the Danish have had contact with, was on the skiing trip in the austrian Ischgl. Here they visited among other things the bar Kitzloch, where an employee has been previously confirmed infected with the coronavirus.
One of the danes from the group says to Berlingske that he is looking forward to be able to be tested for immunity to the virus.
/ritzau/
