US Citizens Who Claim They Had the Virus Before January Probably Only Had the Flu, Study Says

When did the virus start? The CDC indicates before January. — (Photo : Pixabay)

When did the local transmissions for the coronavirus epidemic start in the United States? Some scientists say that it arrived sometime in mid-January to February. This happened before the government banned flights to and from China.

A new analysis from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, was reported, saying that anyone who believed they had the virus between December and early in January had the flu instead.

Dr. Robert Redfiled, who heads the CDC, asserted that the U.S. might already have the coronavirus as early as November, which silently fanned out the infections without anyone knowing. Consequently, a sooner than expected testing and contact tracing could have saved more lives compared to the late precautionary measures for the outbreak.

"This puts data into the discussion. Before this, we had the discussion without a lot of data," Redfield said.

The CDC has pooled together four kinds of data with the help of health officials from six states. This study also included genetics experts, who ran tests from nasal mucus samples before the coronavirus became a daily thing of discussion in the country.

Another study looked at the collected respiratory specimens from January to February amounting to 11,000 samples. Another one was genetic testings from the virus taken from patients in the Northeast parts of the country, such as California and Washington. Finally, cadaver findings from the state of California also made the bill.

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Travel bans from China prevented the infections of coronavirus from spreading all over the United States. However, it was only later that what was once contained and no longer a risk became a growing epidemic after the ban was imposed.

With these data on hand, the CDC now is assured that the virus made its way in the United States via "importation" from China. They are basing this from all the testing date and genetic sample analysis taken from the virus as stated in a report.

For this reason, they then speculated that additional strains were transported from Europe to the United States. This finding is supported by other hypotheses, which propose that the virus came from Europe and arrived in New York.

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Here is a concrete example of such a predicament.

Dubbed as "Patient Zero," he arrived at the Seattle-Tacoma airport mid-January and began to feel symptoms. There were isolation and contact tracing, but after that, more cases that had no links to the patient piled up. Health officials then suspected that the virus he was tainted with was quite the same as the viruses that infected many individuals.

"It seems that a virus that was probably identical to the Washington epidemic cluster got in at some point in early February and gave rise to a bunch of identical viruses," University of California professor Joel Wertheim said.