Experts on deadly diseases say there may be a sizeable coronavirus epidemic already underway in the U.S., with several cases believed to have spread person-to-person with unknown origins, including the patient in Washington State who died Saturday.
The patient, a man in his 50s, was the first confirmed U.S. death from coronavirus.
"I believe we're facing an already substantial outbreak in Washington State that was not detected until now due to narrow case definition requiring direct travel to China," Trevor Bedford, an associate professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington, tweeted Saturday.
Bedford compared the genomes of two coronavirus infections in Washington State and found that they shared a rare genetic variation, indicating they likely were related and that the virus has been spreading through other people in the community for nearly six weeks.
The Washington State death, like the two deaths in Iran, happened so "immediately soon upon testing resuming" that there may be a sizeable epidemic already underway, Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist, health economist, and nutrition scientist at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, tweeted Sunday.
The coronavirus epidemic "doubling time is 1 week," he added, "and thus it takes time for cases to build and severe cases to emerge. This is why a death is like a canary in coal mine tip of iceberg signal."
The novel coronavirus has killed more than 2,900 people worldwide, the vast majority in mainland China. There have been more than 85,000 global cases, with infections on every continent except Antarctica.
President Donald Trump on Sunday announced new screening procedures and tighter travel restrictions a day after the first coronavirus death was reported in the U.S. The World Health Organization says the outbreak has reached the "highest level" of risk for the world, with director-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warning it can go in "any direction."
The U.S. has reached at least 74 confirmed cases of the virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state and local health authorities. Brazil, Georgia, Greece, North Macedonia, Norway, Pakistan and Romania reported their first coronavirus cases last week.
WHO last Wednesday said the number of new COVID-19 cases outside China exceeded those inside the country for the first time since the outbreak, which originated in Wuhan, China. U.S. health officials on the same day confirmed the first possible community transmission of the coronavirus in America.
Scott Gottlieb, who previously served as the FDA's Deputy Commissioner for Medical and Scientific Affairs and before that, as a senior advisor to the FDA Commissioner, said the case count in the U.S. is "likely to grow quickly."
"Identifying patients is key to getting them proper treatment, containing outbreaks where we can, and mitigating spread where containment isn't fully possible. These must be our focus now," he tweeted.
The FDA on Friday announced it would allow high complexity U.S. labs to advance their own tests for coronavirus instead of relying on a diagnostic developed by the CDC, leading to Bedford's analyses that the viral strain in Washington State traces to a Chinese strain from Fujian, likely arriving in the Seattle area before January 15.
According to Mike Famulare, a principal research scientist at the Institute for Disease Modeling in Bellevue, Wa., who conducted the analysis, between 150 and 1,500 people may have the virus. He said the patients have either been "infected and recovered" or are "infected now."
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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