The two newly reported deaths show that the virus was spreading in California well before officials realized it and that outbreaks were underway in at least two parts of the country at about the same time.
Thousands of travelers from China and other affected regions entered the U.S. before travel bans and airport screenings were put in place by the Trump administration in mid- and late January. Lack of widespread testing meant the country was flying blind to the true number of infections.
“It now appears most likely that there were multiple seeding events that introduced the virus to the United States,”
“It shifts everything weeks earlier, extends geographic involvement, (and) further shows how our inability to test let this outbreak loose,” said Dr. Eric Topol, head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in San Diego.
What the newly reported deaths show “is that we had community transmission probably to a significant degree far earlier than we had known,” Cody said. “And that indicates that the virus was probably introduced and circulating in our community, again, far earlier than we had known.”
Two people with the coronavirus died in California as much as three weeks before the U.S. reported its first death from the disease in late February
Dr. Sara Cody, health director in Northern California’s Santa Clara County, said the deaths were missed because of a scarcity of testing and the federal government’s limited guidance on who should be tested.
The infections in the two patients were confirmed by way of autopsy tissue samples that were sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for analysis. The county coroner’s office received the results on Tuesday, officials said.
https://globalnews.ca/news/6856758/coronavirus-california-early-deaths/
In the wake of the disclosure, Gov. Gavin Newsom said he has directed coroners throughout the state to take another look at deaths as far back as December to help establish more clearly when the epidemic took hold in California.
Officials said the two Santa Clara County patients died at home — a 57-year-old woman on Feb. 6 and a 69-year-old man on Feb. 17 — and that neither had traveled out of the country to a coronavirus outbreak area.
“Where did this come from if it wasn’t her traveling?” Macias said. “Patricia may not be the first. It’s just the earliest we have found so far.”