Earliest COVID-19 Patient May Have Been Infected in a Dental Office

Michael Worobey, PhD, chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, has created a timeline for the start of the global pandemic in Wuhan, China. The person identified as the earliest known COVID-19 patient is a 41-year-old man with no connection to the Huanan Market—the supposed ground zero for SARS-CoV-2—who believes he contracted COVID-19 in a dental office while seeking treatment for retained deciduous teeth. The timeline, published in Science, begins November 18, 2019 with the first human infected; this person remains unknown. The earliest COVID-19 patient sought dental treatment on December 8, 2019. Click here to read more.