New discoveries shift coronavirus timeline by months |
News |
Written by The Hill Press |
Wednesday, 06 May 2020 10:16 |
First known case traced to mid-November in China's Hubei province. Virus may have made it here to US by December. WASHINGTON, DC - The coronavirus that has exploded into a pandemic has almost certainly been circulating for several months longer than public health experts first suspected, masked by asymptomatic cases or illnesses incorrectly diagnosed. Scientists believe the first known case of a patient contracting the coronavirus happened in mid-November, in a 55-year-old resident of China's Hubei province. That was six weeks before the World Health Organization's (WHO) surveillance network picked up reports of a cluster of atypical pneumonia cases in Wuhan, the province's largest city. There are increasing signs that the virus had begun its global spread long before it was identified. |