First Coronavirus Case In China Detected On 17 November - Weeks Before Official Admission: Reports 

Several reports in Chinese media have said the first case of the Novel Coronavirus was reported back on 17 November last year. The claims have been made attributing an unpublished government data which was sourced by top Chinese news outlets, The Guardian reported.

As per South China Morning Post, which claims to have accessed the government data, the authorities in China had found about 266 people who had contracted the virus last year and brought them under medical scanner.

The data shows, the first case had come before the authorities on 17 November, weeks before China admitted the outbreak of the deadly virus.

The report further strengthens the criticism the Chinese government had been drawing for alleged attempts of covering up the outbreak in its initial weeks. It was also claimed that warnings from several doctors and other whistle-blowers about a new SARS-like virus in Hubei Province’s Wuhan were also silenced by Chinese authorities.

The first patient was a 55-year-old person from Hubei who was detected in November last year, the SCMP report claimed, while adding that for about a month since the first case at least one to five new cases were detected every day. This had taken the toll of infected people to 60 until 20 December 2019, the report said.

On the other hand, the Chinese government in its officials statements to the World Health Organisation (WHO) claimed that the first positive case of the CoVid-19 was reported only on 8 December.

However, there were reports that several doctors who attempted to warn their colleagues about a possible outbreak were reprimanded in late December, and the medical authorities in China had not officially informed about the human-to-human transmission of the virus until 21 January.

Experts across the globe have been blaming it on China to not address the issue in time and to try to cover it up, which led to a huge outbreak. They also allege that China’s failure of shutting its borders allowed the virus to spread outside, which has now become a pandemic.

The virus so far has killed more than 6,400 people worldwide, while infecting over 1,50,000 people. After China, countries like Italy and Iran have been worst hit by the CoVid-19, of which no direct cure has been found yet.