Coronavirus: Did Britain’s ‘patient zero’ contract disease at an Austrian ski resort?

A family from East Sussex has suggested they were Britain’s first coronavirus cases, arguing they caught the virus in January after a visit to an Austrian ski resort, which is now under investigation over an alleged unreported case.

Daren Bland, a 50-year-old IT consultant, travelled to Ischgl, Austria, on 15 January with three friends, from Denmark and the US, and said he fell ill when he returned to the UK with symptoms that matched coronavirus.

He added that he passed the infection to his wife and children, with his daughter developing a temperature and persistent cough during her illness.

If confirmed, the cases would show that transmission of Covid-19 within the UK occurred more than a month before the first reported case on 28 February.

The UK’s first recorded cases on 31 January were two Chinese nationals who had contracted the virus abroad.

Austrian authorities have opened an investigation into the Ischgl ski resort over an allegation that it failed to report a case of coronavirus when a worker fell ill in February.

The resort has been linked to hundreds of cases across Europe after visitors from Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Germany and Austria tested positive for Covid-19 following trips to the town.

However, reports of the worker falling ill have not been officially confirmed yet and the positive tests were said to have been in early March — too early to have caused Mr Bland’s infection.

It is unclear at this time what illness the Bland family had, especially as Covid-19 symptoms are similar to the symptoms for flu.

Mr Bland told The Telegraph he visited the busy Kitzloch bar in Ischgl, where customers are reportedly known to play the drinking game beer pong — sometimes by taking turns to spit the same ping-pong ball into a beer glass.

“People were hot and sweaty from skiing and waiters were delivering shots to tables in their hundreds,” he told the newspaper.

“You couldn’t have a better home for a virus.”

Mr Bland said he suffered fatigue and was breathless during his 10-day illness.

His wife, Sarah, told The Telegraph she had a temperature, exhaustion and “strange flushes”, while her daughter had a “temperature and persistent cough” — symptoms that have been identified by the UK government as potentially linked to coronavirus.

If Mr Bland is confirmed to have fallen ill with Covid-19, it would show that the virus had been circulating at the ski resort even earlier than previously thought and present a new challenge for authorities looking to trace cases.

On Wednesday, senior UK health officials said they were in the process of checking the accuracy of coronavirus antibody testing kits, which could be used to show if a person has had the virus.

The tests are designed to detect Covid-19 antibodies in a person’s blood that are made by the immune system to fight the virus and indicate that the person has developed some immunity to the disease.

The kits will not show if someone is currently infected with the virus.

This would be an important development in the government’s response to the pandemic because it would allow authorities to get a better understanding of how far the virus has already spread and potentially how early it arrived in the UK.

However, it is unlikely that the Bland family will be able to get tested quickly, as frontline NHS workers will get priority for the kits so they can return to work as soon as possible.