Making Sense of Medical Science (MSMS)

The CoV-2 virus and the illness that it causes, COVID-19, were first identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, but it wasn't until Jan. 20 that the first confirmed COVID-19 case, in a traveler who just returned to Seattle from China, was found in the US. However, new findings published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases show that the virus had infected people in the US much earlier.

The CDC found coronavirus antibodies in 106 out of 7,389 blood donations collected between Dec. 13 and Jan. 17 from residents in nine states. The presence of antibodies in a person's blood means they were exposed to the coronavirus.

Coronavirus antibodies were found in 39 samples from California, Oregon, and Washington as early as Dec. 13 to Dec. 16. Antibodies were also found in 67 samples from Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin in early January, weeks before the first confirmed COVID-19 case appeared in the US. This means that the virus was widely spreading throughout the US weeks, if not months before the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in the US. This is consistent with a recent report from the UCLA medical center that where was an unexpected 50% spike in patients with respiratory illness beginning in December.

In other words, evidence strongly supports the notion that the virus was widely spreading around the US and the world before health officials and the public were aware of it.

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