How US coronavirus diagnoses are lagging behind the outbreak

NEW YORK - When there were just over a dozen official recorded cases of the new coronavirus in the US, at least 50 people who later tested positive were already feeling ill. By the time 50 cases were officially confirmed, at least 1,200 people had already started showing symptoms of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.

Looking at the date patients' symptoms started tells epidemiologists more about the true progression of an outbreak than confirmed case numbers alone. That's because there are often lags between the moment someone is infected, when they fall ill and when they receive a positive test result. The date a person became ill is usually determined from a patient's medical history or interviews by public health professionals. In some instances, the CDC has estimated onset dates for coronavirus cases.

The first reported US case was a 35-year-old man in Washington state who had recently travelled to Wuhan, China, where the virus was first detected. He reported seeking medical help because he had seen an alert from the CDC about the new coronavirus outbreak in China that matched his symptoms. Most new infections in the United States today come from local contacts.

Symptom onset data is not available for every reported Covid-19 case in the United States, but even the subset published by the CDC, which includes more than 40,000 cases, shows a substantially higher number of infections in late February and early March compared to confirmed case tallies from the same period.

The world never imagined such a dangerous virus could spread by so many people coming out of China in such a short period of time! Perhaps only China was prepared as they may have known it beforehand!

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