Ski holiday Brit, 53, could be UK’s new ‘patient zero’ after catching coronavirus a month before first known case
A LONDON art director may be Britain's new 'patient zero' as it is believed she contracted coronavirus a month before the first case was confirmed in the UK.
Susannah Ford, 53, said she fell ill on January 6, two days after returning from a skiing holiday in Austria.
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Mrs Ford, from west London, visited the Obergurgl resort with her husband and two daughters and fell ill after returning to the UK via Gatwick Airport.
An antibody test has shown she suffered from Covid-19 - which suggests she might be the country's 'patient zero'.
The woman, who is the director of the Forward Arts Foundation - an organisation promoting poetry - told The Sunday Times: "It felt like death.
"I ached terribly in every muscle and joint for five days and was too groggy even to go to the Eliot prize for poetry."
'IT FELT LIKE DEATH'
She was the only one in the family who fell ill and assumed it was something she had picked up on an earlier trip to Trinidad.
Mrs Ford's doctor told her she had a vitamin D deficiency, but weeks later, when seeing reports about the coronavirus, she started thinking she might have had Covid-19.
She said she did not have a cough or a fever - but as more symptoms started being listed, she thought that was exactly what had happened to her.
Many of the early Covid-19 cases in Europe were those coming back from skiing holidays in Austria.
Mrs Ford said: "We didn’t go to any clubs or discos, we ate in the hotel every night and were then safely tucked up in bed.
"But I guess when you are skiing you touch lots of things — ski poles, lift buttons..."
Last week, she paid for an antibody test - which detects whether a patient's blood contains the antibodies that form when a person fights off the virus - and it showed she had Covid-19.
The woman is convinced she had the virus when she was ill in January - but she cannot be completely sure about it as the antibody test does not specify exactly when a person had the disease.
She said: "I can’t prove it was then but I haven’t been ill since or come into contact with people with it."
ANTIBODY TEST
Angus Dalgleish, a professor of oncology at St George’s Hospital in London, said: "I think the virus has been around in the UK a lot longer than the government and Sage [scientific advisory group for emergencies] have admitted.
"That means all the inputs were wrong for modelling and shows a tremendous lack of understanding of what we are dealing with."
The disease, which has claimed 40,542 lives in the country, has infected 286,194 people.
The first confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK were reported on January 29, when two Chinese nationals fell ill in York.
On February 6, a British businessman in Brighton was diagnosed with the virus after catching it while on a business trip Singapore.
Steve Walsh, from Hove, east Sussex, is then thought to have infected 11 people when he stopped over for a short skiing holiday in France before returning to the UK.
When he arrived home, he was contacted by Singaporean authorities about the spread of coronavirus at the conference he had attended.
Mr Walsh soon alerted the NHS and Public Health England and was put in isolation at St Thomas' Hospital in London.
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His wife and two children were in self-quarantine after he tested positive for Covid-19.
When he left hospital, he said: "I’m happy to be home and feeling well.
"I want to give a big thank you to the NHS who have been great throughout and my thoughts are with everyone around the world who continues to be affected by the virus.
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