Research Tips Covid-19 may have been in the United States as early as December

Researchers believe they have Evidence found The new coronavirus may be prevalent in the United States at the end of December, about a month before the current timeline from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. is showing.

The study, published last Thursday at the Journal of Medical Internet Research, found a statistically significant increase in clinic and hospital visits by patients who reported respiratory illness as early as the week of December 22. ..

Researchers noticed this trend by examining approximately 10 million medical records from the UCLA healthcare system, which includes three hospitals and 180 clinics.

The first known case of Covid-19 in the United States was thought to be a patient in Washington. visited Wuhan, China, According to the CDC. A 35-year-old patient first went to the clinic on January 19 for symptoms March New England Journal of Medicine.. The CDC did not detect the first case of infection from the community until late February, but the CDC later found evidence of infection from the community. It started in late February.

To ChinaAccording to the Lancet study, the first known case of Covid-19 was a person who developed symptoms on December 1. This means that the patient may have been exposed to the disease as early as November. Some ongoing research has found some evidence that the virus may have been Circulate in Europe During December Before..

Dr. Joan ElmoreWorking on a new study, she said she began examining records after receiving numerous emails from anxious patients via the patient portal at UCLA’s clinic in March. Patients continued to ask if their January cough was Covid-19. A UCLA doctor who was also trained as an epidemiologist said she was curious and started the study.

Elmore and her colleagues noticed a surge in respiratory cases by searching a field of medical records stating why someone came to the clinic and searched for the symptom “cough.” They examined the records from December 2019 to February 2020 and compared the results with the records for the last five years.

“The proportion of outpatients who complain of cough has increased by 50%. Elmore said the results were seen in more than 1,000 more patients than the usual average.

Between December 2019 and February 2020, the number of patients who visited the ER for respiratory complaints and the number of people hospitalized for acute respiratory failure compared to records over the last five years. It showed a similar increase. Increasing cases began in the last week of December.

“Some of these cases may have been caused by the flu, some may be for other reasons, but even outpatient settings can see higher numbers of these types. It’s worth noting, “Elmore said.

Scientists may never know for sure whether these excess patients were early Covid-19 cases, but Elmore doesn’t think it’s out of the question.

“Our world is interrelated. Mr. Elmore has about 500 monthly flights from China to LAX, which can be easily moved in one or two cases and can break into the community. ..

Elmore said that real-time data collected about these diseases could help public health professionals identify and track new outbreaks faster and delay or stop the spread of the disease. I hope this study shows

Dr. Claudia Hohen He is an infectious disease specialist at the Cleveland Medical Center, a university hospital that is not working on research, and believes that Covid-19 may have been in the United States much earlier than it first came to fruition.

“Based on what we know about some other studies, and this one, I’m definitely wondering what this might be,” Hohen said. “That is certainly something to consider.”

More important to her from this study, Hoyen said, such data could enhance some of the disease monitoring that the CDC already has for diseases such as the flu. Said.

“Is there a faster way to understand the illness because other ways of mining the data can lead to other symptoms?” Hohen asked. “Then, if we had analyzed the data in advance, as many patients complain of loss of taste and smell, rather than a month, we might have discovered such symptoms much earlier. “

Christian AndersenA professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research, Covid-19 does not believe that Covid-19 is responsible for the increase in the number of patients with respiratory illness in California in late December.

“Since the SARS-CoV-2 genetic data shows that the pandemic started in China in late November / early December, there is no possibility that the virus spread in December 2019. The same genetic data It is known to be widespread, Andersen said in an email:

“The paper is picking up fake signals, and hospitalization is likely due to the flu and other respiratory illnesses,” Andersen wrote. “Again, genomic data clearly show that there was no widespread infection with SARS-CoV-2 in the United States last December-there may have been some sporadic cases, but that alone. Yes, and certainly not. Seen in “over-hospitalization.” “

Dr. Jeanne Marazzo Infectious disease experts who are not involved in the study disagree. She believes the conclusions are compelling, especially because the study incorporates outpatient records.

“I think it would be very interesting to have more accurate genetic lineage data on the spread of the virus, but without it, we would do a lot of work by inferring existing patterns from these types of analysis. You can, “said Marazzo, head of the Infectious Diseases Department at the University of Alabama’s School of Medicine in Birmingham. “Such primary care data is useful and we really need to pay attention to it.”

“Comparing these numbers to the previous year, I have no good explanation in my mind why I see all the records suddenly increase dramatically, except for Covid,” says Marrazzo. I did. “The strength of the number of pieces of information alone, including outpatients, shows a pattern.”

Neither the CDC nor the WHO responded to CNN’s research and outlook requests for the official pandemic timeline.

According to Marazzo, she and her colleagues across the country are discussing how often patients with what is now called Covid-19 symptoms are seen before the official timeline. Due to the strict restrictions imposed by the CDC on testing early in the pandemic, it was difficult to determine if the respiratory cases they were seeing were caused by the coronavirus.

“I’m pretty sure everyone missed the case in the early stages of the pandemic,” Marazzo said. “This study provides a very interesting window to what might have actually happened.”