在1984年疾病控制與預防中心（CDC）的研究中，最早記錄的艾滋病毒患者被代號為“患者O”，代表“患者離開加利福尼亞”(patient O", which stands for "patient Out of California".) 。但是，報告的某些讀者將字母O解釋為數字0。隨後，由舊金山紀事報記者和作家蘭迪·希爾茨（Randy Shilts）傳播了“零號患者”("Patient Zero")。
"Patient Zero" was used to refer to the supposed source of HIV outbreak in the United States. The expression is actually based on a misunderstanding: in the 1984 study of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one of the earliest recorded HIV-patients, Gaëtan Dugas, was code-named "patient O", which stands for "patient Out of California". The letter O, however, was interpreted by some readers of the report as the numeral 0. The designation "Patient Zero" (for Gaëtan Dugas) was subsequently propagated by the San Francisco Chronicler journalist and author Randy Shilts in his 1987 book And the Band Played On, on which see further below.
The term has been expanded into general usage to refer to an individual identified as the first carrier of a communicable disease in a population (the primary case), or the first incident in the onset of a catastrophic trend.
“零號病人”這種表述實際上最初是基於一種誤解，原文是“Patient O”，“O”代表“Out of”,而不是數字0。
在1984年疾病控制與預防中心（CDC）的研究中，最早記錄的艾滋病毒患者被代號為“患者O”，代表“患者離開加利福尼亞”(patient O", which stands for "patient Out of California".) 。但是，報告的某些讀者將字母O解釋為數字0。隨後，由舊金山紀事報記者和作家蘭迪·希爾茨（Randy Shilts）傳播了“零號患者”("Patient Zero")。
該術語已擴充套件為一般用法，是指被標識為人群中傳染病的第一攜帶者（主要病例）或災難性趨勢發作時的第一事件。
"Patient Zero" was used to refer to the supposed source of HIV outbreak in the United States. The expression is actually based on a misunderstanding: in the 1984 study of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one of the earliest recorded HIV-patients, Gaëtan Dugas, was code-named "patient O", which stands for "patient Out of California". The letter O, however, was interpreted by some readers of the report as the numeral 0. The designation "Patient Zero" (for Gaëtan Dugas) was subsequently propagated by the San Francisco Chronicler journalist and author Randy Shilts in his 1987 book And the Band Played On, on which see further below.
The term has been expanded into general usage to refer to an individual identified as the first carrier of a communicable disease in a population (the primary case), or the first incident in the onset of a catastrophic trend.