The start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. may have been earlier and far larger than official records indicate, according to a new study. Researchers found that a substantial portion of people, including children, in Seattle who were suspected of having the flu this past winter likely had COVID-19 instead. It also estimates the city may have had thousands of cases by early March, when barely over a hundred cases in the state were reported.
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin looked back to two different periods during the earliest days of the pandemic: the month of January in Wuhan, China, and the weeks of late February and early March in Seattle, Washington. They studied data from hospitals and doctors’ offices that had collected throat swab samples from outpatients diagnosed with flu-like symptoms; these samples were later reanalyzed for the presence of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.