The Search Is On for Earliest Coronavirus Deaths

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The first known death caused by the new coronavirus in Chicago occurred in mid-March. But the medical examiner’s 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.

“It’s 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]

1. K&R

[intrepidity]

2. Good. They need to do this. nt

[Igel]

3. I hope they're being smart.

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]

4. My son and his wife were both very ill the first week of feb

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..

[boston bean]

5. Check the people with the mysterious lung disease they attributed to vaping, maybe?