I'm not Norwegian(Swedish) and as far as I understand the article makes no mention of antigen tests. The article is talking about *antibodies* being found in blood tests from December 2019.

I think the title should be changed, if someone who speaks Norwegian can weigh in that'd be helpful.

This section is also interesting

    Det er også tidligere i pandemien påvist at koronaviruset sirkulerte i Italia i 2019, så tidlig som i september 2019, viser en italiensk studie fra Milano.

    Forskere har påpekt at viruset trolig også sirkulerte i kinesiske Wuhan lenge før det ble offisielt påvist. Hovedteorien er fortsatt at viruset først spredte seg der.

    It has also been proven, earlier in the pandemic, that COVID19 was circulating in Italy in 2019, as early as September, according to an Italian study from Milano.

    Scientist have pointed out that the virus likely circulated in Wuhan a long time before it was officially detected[påvist, unsure if this is "proven"]. The leading theory remains that the virus originated there.

This is not blood samples that are positive for antigen, but blood samples that contain covid-19 reactive antibodies.

Now, cross-reactive antibodies is a thing, so I wouldn't pay a lot of attention to these number unless they can show that e.g. blood from 2017 had much less covid-19-reactive antibodies than the blood from 2019.

Actual study: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/epidemiology-and-inf...

Original press release: https://www.ahus.no/nyheter/koronaviruset-kan-ha-vert-i-norg...

Google translated version: https://www-ahus-no.translate.goog/nyheter/koronaviruset-kan...

There was another one in France a while back. I understand the political implications of this (namely that Covid19 probably did not originate from Wuhan after all)

But given that we only seen 2 samples among millions, could this simply be an error? Like test errors, mislabelled or the sample being infected at a later point?

It seems to me that the death rate and transmissability of the wuhan strain of covid means it is unlikely it was around in other countries prior to its discovery in china, the deaths would have been noticed. Is it more likely that a less lethal strain was circulating, a few people developed antibodies, then it mutated in wuhan to become the more deadly version?.

This would explain early antibodies, the lack of corresponding deaths in europe,but we also know how easy this thing mutates now.

The article mentions December 2019, I found another article [1] showing SARS-CoV-2 as early as September 2019 in Italy.

From the article: "A further SARS-CoV-2 antibodies test was carried out by the University of Siena for the same research titled “Unexpected detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the pre-pandemic period in Italy”.

It showed that four cases dating back to the first week of October were positive for antibodies, meaning they had got infected in September, Giovanni Apolone, a co-author of the study, told Reuters."

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-tim...

English version: https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/europe/covid-19-was...

My partner and myself got very sick on holiday in Germany, December 2019. Didn't think too much of it, until the symptoms of Covid started getting published and they all sounded eerily familiar. By the time antibody tests were available in my country it was too late. But no doubt in my mind it was covid. This just adds evidence to that fact

Anecdata, not sure who to report this to for investigative purposes:

1. Teresa from Rako Science saliva testing station used to work as Air New Zealand cabin crew. With 5 other crew members, they went to Shanghai, and also stayed in the Grand Hyatt hotel opposite Taipei 101 in October 2019.

They went to a nearby night market, presumably Taipei Hwahsi Tourist Night Market (which I went to on 2009-09-04, and had a lovely time).

After that visit, they all had a respiratory infection similar to a bad flu, which didn't clear up after the doctor provided steroids and iron supplements, and they have had recurrences since then, roughly every 4 months.

They're pretty sure in retrospect that they know what it was.

To my knowledge, this is earlier than any confirmed WHO reports, at least as far as Wikipedia goes.

2. Mum reports that mum & dad's neighbours also report a bad flu in October/November 2019 in the Pays de Gex, near Geneva, Switzerland.