Up until recently, it was believed that the first coronavirus death in the United States occurred in Washington state on February 29, 2020. However, autopsies have shown there were two earlier coronavirus deaths in Northern California’s Santa Clara County, one on Feb. 6 and the other on Feb. 17, CNN is reporting.
“We know there was a person diagnosed in late January with the virus — but to have at least three people right around the beginning of February and late January already have the infection and two of them pass away means the virus has been around for a while,” County Executive Jeff Smith said after the autopsy reports were made public on Tuesday, according to the Mercury News.
The two February deaths, as well as a third death in San Jose, California on March 6 of a man who later tested positive for COVID-19, also occurred before the first coronavirus death was publicly reported in Santa Clara County, on March 9.
Smith added that the new autopsy results were received Tuesday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) after tissue samples were sent to the federal agency by the county Medical Examiner-Coroner.
Dr. Sara Cody, Santa Clara county’s chief medical officer, said the three victims had no known travel histories, to China or anywhere else. Dr. Cody believes they caught the virus through community spread.
“That is a very significant finding,” Dr. Ashish K. Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told CNN’s “New Day” on Wednesday. “Somebody who died on February 6, they probably contracted that virus early to mid-January. It takes at least two to three weeks from the time you contract the virus and you die from it.”
“COVID-19 is something we’re going to be managing for a very long time, months and likely years,” Dr. Cody told the county’s Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.
“We anticipate this won’t be the only surge, we’ll have other surges that will likely come if we let up too much so we have to be extra careful to develop the information systems to enable us to monitor what we’re doing.”
