The coronavirus responsible for Covid-19 had been circulating in the United States since at least December 2019, weeks before the first official case was confirmed in January 2020. That’s according to a new study published Tuesday.
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The U.S. National Centers of Health (NIH) analyzed 24,000 blood samples taken from volunteers between January 2 and March 18, 2020. Antibodies to the sars-CoV-2 virus were found in nine patients. This was done through two different serological tests, to reduce the risk of false positive results. The antibodies detected by these tests neutralize the virus’ ability to infect cells and do not show up until two weeks after the actual infection.
The first samples to return positive came from two participants from Illinois and Massachusetts and were collected on January 7 and 8, 2020 respectively. This seems to indicate that they were already infected with the virus at the end of December. In addition, the two test subjects in question were neither in New York nor Seattle, while those two cities are considered the gateways through which the virus made its way into the US.
CDC concluded the same
“The antibody tests allow us to better understand the spread of sars-CoV-2 in the United States during the early days of the epidemic in the country, when testing was limited,” said Keri Althoff, a professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University and lead author of the study.
The study, published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, confirms similar results from the CDC, which reached the same conclusion last November.
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