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How coronavirus hitched a ride through China
On January 16, a 43-year-old employee of a city department store made the short trip to a wholesale jewellery mall in the capital, Beijing, where she met a client with a fever.
The mall was more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) from a wet market in Wuhan that was linked to 41 cases of a mysterious virus, though officials at the time said there was no conclusive evidence of transmission among people.
Shortly after returning to work at the Tianjin Baodi Baihe Department Store in Tianjin, one of the woman’s colleagues fell ill, and then another. By January 25, she developed a fever herself.
Between Jan 20 and 24, at least eight staff and 21 customers later confirmed to be infected visited the store. A further 15 family members, drivers and close contacts of the customers and staff also caught the virus.
Within weeks the department store would emerge as one of the largest virus clusters recorded outside Wuhan, and the focus of a mass containment effort that scoured surveillance footage, set up roadblocks and traced more than 9,000 close contacts linked to it.
The mall was more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) from a wet market in Wuhan that was linked to 41 cases of a mysterious virus, though officials at the time said there was no conclusive evidence of transmission among people.
Shortly after returning to work at the Tianjin Baodi Baihe Department Store in Tianjin, one of the woman’s colleagues fell ill, and then another. By January 25, she developed a fever herself.
Between Jan 20 and 24, at least eight staff and 21 customers later confirmed to be infected visited the store. A further 15 family members, drivers and close contacts of the customers and staff also caught the virus.
Within weeks the department store would emerge as one of the largest virus clusters recorded outside Wuhan, and the focus of a mass containment effort that scoured surveillance footage, set up roadblocks and traced more than 9,000 close contacts linked to it.
https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/SPREAD/xegpbwexvqz/index.html
