BRASILIA, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) – The Health Department of Espirito Santo State, Brazil, on Tuesday announced that IgG antibodies, specific to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, had been detected in samples of blood serum collected from December 2019.
The health department said 7,370 serum samples were collected between December 2019 and June 2020 from patients suspected of being infected with dengue and chikungunya.
After analysis of the samples, IgG antibodies were detected in 210 people, 16 of whom suggested the presence of the new coronavirus in the state even before Brazil officially announced its first confirmed case on February 26, 2020. One of the samples was thus collected on December 18, 2019.
The health department said it takes about 20 days after infection for a patient to show detectable levels of IgG, meaning the infection could have occurred between late November and early December 2019.
On the same day, the Brazilian Ministry of Health issued a notice requesting the State of Espirito Santo to carry out a thorough epidemiological investigation and send serum samples to the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro for RT-PCR tests.
“It is only after confirmation by the reference laboratory and further epidemiological studies that the Ministry of Health will be able to confirm whether or not these cases were positive for SARS-CoV-2,” the ministry said.
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