COVID-19 might have spread ‘unseen’ through Puget Sound as early as Christmas, study shows
Our current enemy, COVID-19, most likely loomed large in our lives earlier than we realized, according to new research.
In a study published Aug. 12 on The Lancet’s EClinicalMedicine journal, researchers from the University of Texas at Austin tested samples from patients with COVID-like symptoms in Wuhan, China, and the Seattle metropolitan area, including King and Snohomish counties.
Their conclusion: “The spread of COVID-19 in Wuhan and Seattle was far more extensive than initially reported.
“Given that COVID-19 appears to be overwhelmingly mild in children, our high estimate for symptomatic pediatric cases in Seattle suggests that there may have been thousands more mild cases at the time.”
Lauren Ancel Meyers is a professor of integrative biology and statistics and data sciences who leads the UT Austin COVID-19 Modeling Consortium. Meyers spoke to the university’s UT News about the study.
“Even before we realized that COVID-19 was spreading, the data imply that there was at least one case of COVID-19 for every two cases of flu,” Meyers said.
Researchers re-examined swabs taken from people with symptoms of acute respiratory illness “during periods where SARS-CoV-2 may have been spreading undetected,” according to the research report.
Wuhan at the time of its lockdown Jan. 22 reported 422 cases. But, according to UT News, the new research suggests undetected cases may have numbered more than 12,000 at the time. By March 9, the researchers estimate that more than 9,000 people in the Seattle area symptomatic with flu-like symptoms actually had COVID-19, with about a third of that total involving children.
The researchers estimate that the Wuhan pandemic started with one person who developed symptoms “sometime between Oct. 26 and Dec. 13, 2019; in Seattle, the seeding likely occurred between Dec. 25, 2019 and Jan. 15, 2020.”
March 6 was when the first case was reported in Pierce County.
Wuhan and Seattle historically were the first to report documented cases of COVID-19, with Dec. 31 marking the first case officially reported in Wuhan. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in June reported there was limited, early spread in the United States from Jan. 21 through Feb. 23, with 14 cases detected by public health agencies, all tied to travel from China.
The authors of the report said they are not assigning blame to public health officials in missing cues of a burgeoning pandemic:
“Our results do not imply that health authorities were aware of these undocumented infections, rather that they went unseen during the early and uncertain stages of COVID-19 emergence in the two cities.”
