So far, post mortem autopsies found two individuals who died at home in Santa Clara county in California on Feb 6 and Feb 17 succumbed to COVID-19, as confirmed by the CDC. At that time if you don't have relevant travel or contact history, you couldn't get tested. The earliest confirmed case in the US is the one who arrived at Seattle from Wuhan in Jan 21. By Feb 20, there was only 15 confirmed cases in the US. So, these two death show there was community spread undetected latest by Feb 6. But in reality, it typically take 11.5 days for 97% of the people to progress from infection to develop symptom, another 8 days from symptom to require ventilator, and about a month total before one would succumbed to COVID-19. And the individual who died in Feb 6 is unlikely to be the patient zero unless CDC could show how she got infected. In short, undetected community spread is already happening in the US even before the first known case arrived from Wuhan in Jan 21.First U.S. coronavirus death came weeks before previously thought
April 22, 2020 / 7:59 AM / AFP
Two people who died in California in early and mid-February were confirmed Tuesday as coronavirus cases. The first of those deaths came weeks before what was thought to be the first COVID-19 fatality in the United States. The earliest U.S. death attributed to the new coronavirus was previously thought to have been on February 26 in Kirkland, Washington.
Autopsies on the two individuals who died at home on February 6 and February 17 showed they succumbed to COVID-19, the Santa Clara County coroner said, after receiving confirmation from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Another person who passed away in Santa Clara County on March 6 also died of the disease caused by the coronavirus, the medical examiner-coroner said in a statement.
"These three individuals died at home during a time when very limited testing was available only through the CDC," the coroner said.
"Testing criteria set by the CDC at the time restricted testing to only individuals with a known travel history and who sought medical care for specific symptoms."
The coroner's office said it expected to identify more coronavirus-related fatalities in Santa Clara.
"As the medical examiner-coroner continues to carefully investigate deaths throughout the county, we anticipate additional deaths from COVID-19 will be identified."
Health experts say a shortage of test kits means the United States may be underestimating the extent of the virus outbreak.
A study this week indicated that the novel coronavirus was likely far more widespread than official figures suggest.
Blood samples taken from 3,300 volunteers in Santa Clara County showed the true number of COVID-19 cases was at least 50 times higher than the number of confirmed infections in the county, according to the study by Stanford researchers.
Santa Clara was among the first areas in the U.S. to tell residents to stay at home to contain the spread of the virus, ordering a shutdown from March 17.
The United States has recorded more than 800,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University, with over 45,000 deaths -- the most reported of any country.
