Article content
Speculation that the coronavirus might have appeared in our country much earlier than was actually confirmed is starting to come straight from the sky. In the program A dost! on Televize Seznam several people were asked who had been experiencing Covid-19 symptoms earlier, but neither they nor the doctors treating them took the virus into account. Is it possible that the coronavirus hit us much earlier?
The new type of coronavirus in the Czech Republic did not necessarily have to appear on March 1. It is possible that infections in people could have been confirmed already in December or January. Some experienced severe respiratory difficulties, headaches, joint and lung pain, fevers and malaise already at the turn of the year. At that time, however, no one considered coronavirus because China itself was keeping the extent of the epidemic very secret…
People’s testimonies and description of symptoms
For the program A DOST! several dozen people who may have been infected with the coronavirus spoke out. Unfortunately, none of them could be tested; it wasn’t assumed at the time that this particular virus could be the cause, since the epidemic had only broken out in Wuhan and the surrounding area. Some testimonies are very detailed and there is a certain probability that the virus was here much earlier. Twenty-nine-year-old Pavel Helt from Litvínov told the program that he met a colleague at the turn of the year who had returned from Thailand. In the following days he began to notice something like a severe flu. „I lay down for fourteen days and I was completely exhausted. High fevers, headache, eye pain, I couldn’t breathe,“ Pavel confided. He added that it looked like pneumonia. He further revealed that he doesn’t usually get similar illnesses. „I had a dry cough, I thought I would cough my lungs out. Because of it I couldn’t sleep at night,“ he wrote in the program about the course of his illness and added that his mother had similar problems and went to see a doctor thinking she might be having a heart attack. She was completely without taste and smell for a month.
Pneumonia, pulmonary chlamydia, everything negative
Twenty-seven-year-old Christina from Havířov said that in the morning she couldn’t even take a breath until she had her head over a pot of steam. At the doctor she had all the tests done, which ultimately were negative, including for pulmonary chlamydia. No antibiotics or cough or allergy medications helped. Alexandra T, who is 69, confided in the show that in the second half of January she babysat her granddaughter, who had the flu. She caught it from her. „Fevers, I felt very bad, my whole body ached, cough. The next day my husband and cousin got infected from me,“ the grandmother described her symptoms. The doctor recommended Paralen and Ibalgin to Alexandra and asked her to call in every other day so she wouldn’t infect anyone else. „So that it wouldn’t be the coronavirus,“ the doctor allegedly said.
A failed ski course Similar symptoms were experienced by children on one ski course. Within a few days more than twenty out of forty children went back home. Teachers and caregivers also fell ill, and that within two days.
„I am a teacher and I have led many trips and school nature stays. It never happened to us that someone arrived with the flu or tonsillitis, only exceptionally. Never like this,“ said Jitka from Karlín.
„It never happened that within two days half of a trip left with exactly the same symptoms of very high and rapidly onset fevers and a gagging cough,“ she added.
At the doctor they were prescribed antibiotics and diagnosed with left-sided pneumonia.
Medications did not work at all and the sick remained ill for many more weeks. Many people were interviewed and none of them are sure which disease they had.
Coronavirus could have appeared here earlier Even the Minister of Health Adam Vojtěch and his deputy Roman Prymula stated that information from China cannot be relied upon. The program briefly lists that from November to early February 136 planes full of people arrived from China. The virus, about which communist China was almost unwilling to speak, could thus have spread much earlier. Even though it is not certain whether infection with Covid-19 provides immunity, those who have already had the disease may have it. It is therefore necessary to create a so-called population overview that will clearly show who has already had the infection. Antibody tests are currently available, but it is necessary to arrange where the testing will take place.

