The virus ignited in the US by mid-January, research says

Some claim that the Americans were sick with the coronavirus in November and that the infection is spreading in the United States, said Dr. Robert Redfield of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States.

“(This) puts data into the discussion. Prior to this, we talked without much data,” he said.

In a study published Friday, CDC researchers worked with six state health authorities and geneticists and disease modelers in the Seattle area.

They used four types of data. One was reported ill by the emergency departments of hospitals across the country. The other was a review of about 11,000 respiratory specimens collected in January and February. Third was a genetic analysis of viruses taken from patients in California, Washington, and the northeast. Finally, autopsy findings from California also fit the theory.

The new coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China at the end of last year. The first U.S. infected person identified was a traveler — a Washington man who returned from Wuhan on January 15 and asked for help at a clinic on January 19.

The White House announced a ban on travelers from China on January 31 and began enforcement on February 3. Prior to that, some travelers were screened for symptoms at some airports. Later, health authorities found that the virus spreads before symptoms appear, resulting in incomplete symptom-based screening.

In February, White House officials declared that the virus was contained and was not a current risk to US citizens. Until late February, the study found that coronavirus infections were rarely diagnosed by the emergency department and were identified as a growing epidemic.

However, research found limited spread in some communities in late January and early February.

Early cases of infection were found in 11,000 airway samples collected from six states. The earliest was a sample collected in the Seattle area on February 21st.

Genetic analysis from early cases suggests that a single strain of virus from China began to spread in the United States between January 18 and February 9.

One of the authors of the report, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center at Trevor Bedford, Seattle, uses the viral genetic code to track pandemics. He said in a Friday email that the flu season has peaked, although there may have been some undiscovered cases of coronavirus in the United States in December or January.

“It’s almost certainly a flu or another respiratory infection, based solely on the January symptoms,” said Bedford.

The earliest infections in Washington and California were due to a virus in China, a genetic analysis found. Some introductions of the virus from Europe followed in February and March.

Another study published Friday by Science magazine focused on the onset of the virus in New York City, which was hit hard by the virus.

We examined the genetic information of coronavirus collected from 84 patients treated with Mount Sinai Health System between February 29 and March 18. This information provides clear evidence of multiple transmissions, primarily in the first few weeks of transmission from Europe to New York, in March the authors concluded.

The Trump administration announced most travel bans in Europe on March 11 and went into effect on March 13. The UK and Ireland were not initially included.

Ana Gonzalez-Reiche and her companion authors wrote that limiting community travel had little effect in preventing the spread of infection because community-led infections had already occurred.

A second official at the CDC was late for previously recognized US officials to understand how the virus spread from Europe.

So was the White House travel ban too late to stop the outbreak from the beginning?

The CDC study was not designed to evaluate it, said agency Dr Jay Butler.

“It’s important to realize that the travel ban was intended to delay the introduction of the virus,” he said. “We knew that the probability of complete isolation from the United States would be quite low.”

As of Friday, there were more than 1.7 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States, with more than 101,000 deaths.

Johnson reported from Washington.

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