Coronavirus cluster in China was traced back to just one woman who got in a lift – 7NEWS.com.au

One womans ride in an elevator led to 71 people falling sick with coronavirus, researchers have found.
In Chinas Heilongjiang Province, no new cases of coronavirus had been detected between March 11 and April 9, 2020, but by April 22, dozens had been infected – with contact tracing investigators racing against time to narrow down the source.
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The cluster began on April 7, when the first person to have tested positive to COVID-19 noticed symptoms.
Exactly who weeks earlier, he had stayed the night at his girlfriends place. Days later the couple attended a party with another man and his two sons.
On April 2, the second man suffered a stroke and was admitted to hospital, where he was cared for by his two sons and shared communal amenities, such as a microwave, with other patients.
Four days after being first admitted to hospital, that patient was transferred to another hospital because hed developed a fever.
After the first man tested positive to coronavirus, his girlfriend, her daughter, the second man and another person also contracted it.
But an investigation into the source of the infection revealed not one of the first five infections in the cluster had travelled overseas, meaning they must have acquired the virus locally.
On April 9, the same day the first man tested positive to COVID-19, contact tracers learned his girlfriends neighbour, who lived in a unit above her and her daughter, had returned from the US on March 19.
She had been asked to quarantine at home, where she lived alone, following her return.
Over the next two days, the neighbour underwent antibody tests which found she had previously been infected with the virus, but was asymptomatic.
The woman had no close contact with the mother-daughter pair leading investigators to conclude the daughter had become infected from touching surfaces inside the buildings elevator.
The returned traveller and her neighbour used the same elevator. Credit: Karl Tapales/Getty Images
It was found the neighbour and the mother and daughter had not used the lift at the same time.
No one else from the residential building tested positive for the virus.
Ultimately, the outbreak led to a total of 71 cases of COVID-19, after close contacts of those confirmed cases were all tested.
Forty-eight of those cases were linked to the two hospitals the stroke patient had been admitted to.
The virus in those locations spread to staff and other patients.
The returned traveller was found to be the origin of the cluster after the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention sequenced the genomes of samples in the cluster.
It found most of the genomes in the cluster were identical but different from viral genomes previously circulating in the country, meaning the virus must have originated overseas.
Our results illustrate how a single asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection could result in widespread community transmission, a study published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
This report also highlights the resources required for case investigation and challenges associated with containment of SARS-CoV-2.
Continued measures to protect, screen, and isolate infected persons are essential to mitigating and containing the COVID-19 pandemic.

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