CDC says coronavirus came to the US much earlier than we thought

• The CDC published a new coronavirus study that shows the virus was present in the US in early December 2019, much earlier than initially thought.
• The first positive COVID-19 test in the US dates back to January 19th.
• CDC researchers tested blood from donors and found that 39 people had antibodies as early as December 13th.

The origin of the novel coronavirus is still a mystery, as China has never explained how the Wuhan outbreak happened. Finding out which animals incubated this coronavirus and how the pathogen could mutate so it could bind to human ACE2 receptors is a puzzle that needs solving. And it has nothing to do with pointing the finger at China and painting it as a culprit — although China did make several mistakes in the early days of the Wuhan outbreaks and in the weeks that followed that might have helped the virus spread outside of the country.

The reason why the source of the pandemic needs to be discovered has to do with our ability to defend ourselves against this virus and future threats. Information about the first animal host could also come in handy for COVID-19 therapies and vaccine development and help researchers find ways to prevent a similar pandemic in the future.

China has been desperately trying to pin the COVID-19 source to a different country this year, whether it was the US, Spain, Italy or the Indian subcontinent. Many of those claims were based on research that showed the virus was present outside of China well before late December 2019. But China has yet to prove anything. A study showed that the SARS-CoV-2 mutation that fueled the surges in March and April came out of China as well. The more likely scenario seems to be that the virus escaped China even before late December. New research now indicates that COVID-19 came to America much earlier than initially believed, and perhaps as early as December 2019.

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CDC says coronavirus came to the US much earlier than we thought originally appeared on BGR.com on Tue, 1 Dec 2020 at 15:35:13 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.