The people who live in the 16-story apartment building located at No. 4 Haro Square, in the Basque city of Bilbao, have been plagued by the coronavirus since mid-January. In the space of two weeks, an outbreak among residents and their close contacts has led to 33 positive cases, six of whom have since died.
The Basque health department and several experts believe that a super-spreader may have started the outbreak, with the virus further expanding through the use of the buildingâs two elevators, which can each accommodate five people.
The first alarm went off on January 21, when an 85-year-old woman living on the ninth floor died from Covid-19. But it was not until two days later that her neighbors began to realize that they had a serious problem on their hands. On January 23, the elderly womanâs 50-year-old son also died, a tragedy that was brought to the notice of the building manager the following day.
Winnipeg Free Press Speiriscope By: Doug Speirs | Posted: 7:00 PM CST Friday, Jan. 22, 2021
Winnipeg Free Press
It sounds like the name of a Hollywood thriller The Hunt for Patient Zero.
The phrase patient zero has been on the minds and lips of much of the world as the search continues for the first documented human case of the COVID-19 virus that has so far claimed more than two million lives around the globe, including more than 18,000 in Canada.
According to the World Health Organization, it’s a search that may never yield an answer. We need to be careful about the use of the phrase ‘patient zero,’ which many people indicate as the first initial case, Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, said last week. We may never find who patient zero was. What we need to do is follow the science and follow the studies.