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Glite Dictionary
🦠 First infected person 🌊 First source
patient zero

patient zero

3 7.0
First known person infected in an outbreak who may spread the disease to others
  • noun
  • /ˈpeɪʃənt ˈzɪroʊ/
  • Specialized
translation icon : paciente cero
  • Patient zero in the United States, Thomas Eric Duncan, a black Liberian, infected his Vietnamese American nurse, Nina Pham, with Ebola before his death.

That's the average estimate for when the patient zero got infected, when the first human infection happened.

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Examples

  • Was patient zero coughing?

    Fiction book (1995)

  • That's the average estimate for when the patient zero got infected, when the first human infection happened.

    Lex Fridman

  • But that appears to be kind of the patient zero for the start of this.

  • If, if we were upon patient zero, if the whole world united and said, OK, hold on, something is wrong, Let's all take a week off.

    The Diary Of A CEO

  • Patient zero—this guy Jimbo Scott—worked in an animal quarantine facility in San Jose, California.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • Robert Torrence was patient zero, the first prisoner to contract the disease during the outbreak.

  • Authorities believe that the young boy in La Gloria was patient zero for the disease that spread through the town.

  • Burpee has been identified as patient zero in the recent epidemic, from whom many infections have spread.

Synonyms

index case
vspatient zero
  • Specialized
1 6.7

First known person in an outbreak who helps trace where the disease came from

is the first identified infected person who may have started transmission

Surface Forms

patient zero singular
patient zeros plural

Morphology

patient + zero

The phrase pairs 'patient' (a sick person) with 'zero' (the initial reference point), so a learner who knows both words can often infer it refers to the first/initial case in a spreading event. However, this is a technical/figurative epidemiological label rather than a regular everyday compound, so full understanding may require prior exposure or domain knowledge despite some compositional cues.

Etymology

Patient zero may come from early work by doctors tracking a disease. One popular story says they marked the first known sick person with a small zero on maps or charts and called them patient zero, so the image of one mark starting many cases made the phrase mean the 'first' person who began the spread.