Studies: Hundreds of Thousands May Have Been Infected With COVID-19 in Wuhan in 2020; Patient Zero Emerged October 2019

Medical staff wearing protective clothing arrive with a patient at the Wuhan Red Cross Hospital in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, on Jan. 25, 2020. Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images

As many as 968,800 people in Wuhan, China, had developed antibodies to COVID-19 by April 2020, while the first case appears to have emerged between mid-October and mid-November in 2019, according to two new studies.

An estimated 6·9 percent “of a cross-sectional sample of the population of Wuhan developed antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, with 39·8 percent of this population seroconverting to have neutralising antibodies,” a China-based research group wrote in an article published in The Lancet on March 18.