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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Search Is On for Earliest Coronavirus Deaths
The first known death caused by the new coronavirus in Chicago occurred in mid-March. But the medical examiners office in Cook County, which includes the city, now plans on poring over records of much earlier cases in search of evidence that people may have died from Covid-19 as far back as November.
Across the U.S., health investigators have launched efforts to find previously unidentified deaths from Covid-19, in some cases looking far enough back to potentially rewrite the timeline of when the coronavirus first came to the country and began killing Americans. Public-health officials and scientists said identifying the earliest deaths and infections in the U.S. is critical to understanding fully how the virus was transmitted and how deadly it is.
Investigators in New York, Seattle, Massachusetts and Connecticut are among those looking at past cases. Currently the earliest known death from Covid-19 in the U.S. occurred Feb. 6 in Santa Clara County, Calif.
Its possible that there were deaths before what is understood to be the first death, said Matthew Memoli, the principal investigator of a National Institutes of Health study that aims to quantify the number of undetected infections in the U.S. Some of the earliest reports in China are from the fall, and you have plenty of people traveling back to the U.S. all the time.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-search-is-on-for-earliest-coronavirus-deaths/ar-BB13zJZb?li=BBnb7Kz
SheltieLover
(57,073 posts)intrepidity
(7,339 posts)Igel
(35,374 posts)Cross-referencing death reports with passenger manifests and passport control data.
Of course, we may not like the answer. If it was circulating for weeks while we were told that human-to-human transmission was possible but difficult, when it was suspected to be not quite as difficult as was made out, that's a bit of a timeline problem.
SoCalDem
(103,856 posts)They live in santa clara county..they had fever , chills, shortness of breath, loss of taste and smell...they are eager to get an antibody test, but no luck so far..it lasted for at least 2 weeks..