Hammersmith Woman May Have Been UK’s Patient Zero
Test shows that Susannah Ford could have been first confirmed Covid-19 case
Susannah Ford. Picture: Twitter
An art director from Hammersmith may have been the first person in the UK to have been infected with Covid-19.
53-year-old Susannah Ford, who works for the Forward Arts Foundation, had just returned from a skiing holiday in Austria when she fell ill on 6 January. An antibody test has now shown that she had the virus possibly several weeks before the first cases were confirmed in this country.
She had been on the trip with her husband and two daughters who did not become ill.
In an interview with the Sunday Times she said, "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."
He doctor said that her illness may have had a Vitamin D deficiency but when more details started coming out about the symptoms of coronavirus, she realised she may have had the disease.
Many of the first people in this country who had contracted the virus had been on skiing holidays in the Alpine region.
She told the newspaper that she hadn’t gone out in the evenings and had eaten at their hotel but that she may have got the disease by touching an infected surface.
Increasingly convinced she had contracted it, she paid for an antibody test which gave a positive result. This confirms that she had Covid-19 but cannot pin point the time when she was infected.
It wasn’t until 29 January when two Chinese nationals were diagnosed with Covid-19 in York that there were officially any cases in the UK.
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June 19, 2020