The first known U.S. case of Covid-19 was reported on January 19, 2020, and China reported “a cluster of unexplained illnesses” on December 31, 2019, but testing of donated blood samples shows Covid-19 was already spreading on the U.S. west coast by mid-December, the U.K.-based tabloid Daily Mail reported on Tuesday, December 1, 2020.
Tests at the federal CDC lab in Washington D.C. for Covid-19 antibodies of blood collected by the Red Cross between December 13-16 in Washington, Oregon, and California came back positive, the Daily Mail said, adding, “Coronavirus was likely spreading in much of the U.S. last December” — with the minor caveat that a few experts have questions the reliability of antibody testing for detecting the virus.
The Daily Mail said the tests confirmed what previous genome studies had suggested: “COVID-19 was here, long before Americans knew it.” It also now appears that Covid-19 was spreading globally weeks before the World Health Organization (WHO) or anyone else realized a new virus was on the loose. Complicating things, at least three strains were spreading at the same time (chart below).
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