The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention published an epidemiological investigation earlier this month showing how one woman unwittingly infected 71 people, CNN reported.

On March 19, the woman returned from a trip to the United States to her home in the Heilongjiang Province in China, where the last coronavirus case had been diagnosed a week earlier. The woman, who had no symptoms of the virus, was tested and the results were negative but she was asked to quarantine at home anyway.

The woman followed orders and everything was seemingly fine. But as the epidemiological investigation showed later, things were far from fine.

It began with a man unconnected to the woman who suffered a stroke. The investigation showed that he attended a party at the apartment of a resident of the same building as the traveler.

Ultimately the investigation showed that the traveler, who was silently carrying the coronavirus after all, infected the elevator of the building as she returned home, where she obediently stayed put for two weeks. Meanwhile, her downstairs neighbor contracted the virus from the elevator and she infected her mother and her mother’s boyfriend, who in turn went to a party and infected the stroke patients and his sons.

The stroke patient and two of his sons were brought to two hospitals, where 28 people contracted the virus at the first hospital and another 20 were infected when the stroke patient was transferred to another facility.

The researchers discovered that the genetic makeup of the virus all of the confirmed patients in this new outbreak was genetically identical and was a different strain than that previously found in China.

The investigators finally discovered that a neighbor of one of the newly confirmed patients had recently traveled abroad and they tested her again. She tested negative but had antibodies to the virus, which meant that she had been ill with the virus but was asymptomatic. The researchers categorized her as AO, as the first and original case of the infection chain. All other residents of the building were tested and ruled out as possible carriers.

“Therefore, we believe A0 was an asymptomatic carrier and that B1.1 (her neighbor) was infected by contact with surfaces in the elevator in the building where they both lived,” the researchers wrote. “As of April 22, 2020, A0 remained asymptomatic, and a total of 71 SARS-CoV-2–positive cases had been identified in the cluster.”

“Our results illustrate how a single asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection could result in widespread community transmission.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)