When a 33-year-old Bavarian came down with a sore throat, cough and 39C fever at the end of January, he thought little of it: his symptoms soon passed and he returned to work at Webasto, a car-parts-maker in the town of Stockdorf.
Then an email from China arrived: a woman from Webasto’s Shanghai subsidiary who had visited a week earlier had tested positive for the coronavirus raging in China. She had apparently picked it up from her parents, who are from Wuhan, where the outbreak began.
The Bavarian, who has not been named, immediately went to his doctor and was also found to be positive in what is believed to be the first instance of the virus being transmitted on European soil.
The response was