JAKARTA – Researchers have again found ample evidence of low levels of circulation of the coronavirus in the United States since early December 2019, weeks before the first case was officially reported.
Blood clotting samples have shown people in five states, Illinois, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Mississippi and Massachusetts, were infected with the coronavirus days or weeks before cases were officially reported in the ‘State.
Volunteers who participated in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) ‘All of Us’ study, as part of an ongoing effort to collect health information from 1 million people, donated blood in the framework of the study.
Tests on 24,000 samples taken in early 2020 have shown antibodies to the coronavirus in the blood of at least nine people, according to the report of the researchers of “All of Us” in the journal “Clinical Infectious Diseases”.
“These include individuals with specimens collected on January 7 in Illinois, January 8 in Massachusetts, February 3 in Wisconsin, February 15 in Pennsylvania and March 6 in Mississippi”, have -they wrote as cnn reported on Tuesday June 15th.
The first previously recognized COVID-19 case in Illinois was reported on January 24, when a woman had just returned from Wuhan, China, researchers said.
The first confirmed case in Massachusetts is not until February 1. In Wisconsin, the first confirmed cases were on February 5, in Pennsylvania the first reported cases were on March 6 and in Mississippi on March 11.
“Because it takes about two weeks to develop antibodies after infection, the results suggest that some volunteers were infected in December Vulan,” the researchers said.
“Of the first 12 known cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the United States, the earliest known date of symptom onset was January 14, 2020, and the 12 cases had recently traveled to mainland China or were close contacts of returning travelers. National screening tests for SARS-CoV-2 begin in mid-January 2020, ”they added.
At this moment. The federal government only recommends testing people with symptoms who have a history of travel or have direct contact with travelers. The results suggest that the policy jumped the deal, the researchers said.
“I think what this study shows is that there are still a lot of parts that we have to uncover and put together since the time of this epidemic in the United States,” Dr Keri Althoff told CNN, epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who worked on the study.
A study published last November found evidence of antibodies in the blood of people in the United States on December 13. Other research also showed that the virus landed in Uncle Sam’s country in December.
“This study contributed to the evidence of a low circulation of SARS-CoV-2 in many states at the start of the epidemic in the United States,” the researchers wrote.
Although the data provided for the study is anonymized, researchers can contact volunteers and plan to do so, said Sheri Schully, co-author of the All of Us project at NIH.
“They have a participant portal, where they can actually log in and see what’s being done with their specimens. They will be asked for more information as to whether they have traveled or if they have contacted anyone who may have traveled in 2019 and early 2020, ”said Schully.
One of the volunteers whose blood tested positive also responded to a health survey reported fever, cough and sore throat. They revealed the possibility of having COVID-19 at the time of blood sampling.
“A review of electronic health record data during the relevant period revealed that two HIV-positive participants had mild illness compatible with COVID-19 (eg, fatigue and mild respiratory symptoms). However, further testing is limited and no diagnosis has been confirmed. Seven other HIV-positive participants had no evidence of healthcare use in their electronic health record data, ”the researchers added.
However, the results do not mean that the coronavirus will spread widely in the United States in December 2019 or January 2020, the researchers said.
“It’s important to remember that if you think you might have COVID-19 in those early days, I don’t think anyone is laughing their heads off about what they might have been going through at the start of the pandemic. The prevalence is very, very low, ”Althoff said.
“So if you have some kind of respiratory infection, the chances of it being SARS-CoV-2 are actually pretty low in that time,” he said.
The researchers were careful to make sure they did not get false positive antibody test results, and tested each sample twice. Nonetheless, they said, it’s possible the test could detect pre-existing immunity to the coronavirus that randomly makes antibodies to the 2019 coronavirus. Four other coronaviruses regularly infect people, causing common flu symptoms.
Tests used on blood samples detect an immune response to infection and do not look for direct evidence of infection. The results also show that minorities were more affected by the virus, even at the start of the pandemic. Seven of the nine samples were taken from elderly participants belonging to minorities, the researchers said.
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