Trump hits at WHO as economic outlook sours

The president announces the U.S. will pull the group’s funding, blaming the WHO and China for the devastation of the pandemic.

The spark that started the U.S. coronavirus epidemic arrived during a three-week window from mid-January to early Febru- ary, before the nation halted travel from China, according to the most comprehensive federal study to date of when the virus began spreading.

That means anyone in the U.S. who thought they had the virus in December or early January probably had the flu, public health researchers said.

Some have claimed Amer- icans were getting sick from the coronavirus as early as November and that infections were spreading in the U.S. before any case was iden- tified, said Dr. Robert Redfield, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“(This) puts data into the discussion. Prior to this we had discussion without a lot of data,” he said.

In the study released Friday, CDC researcherscollab- orated with health officials in six states as well as genet- ics researchers and disease modelers in the Seattle area.

They drew on four kinds of data. One was reported illnesses by hospital emergency departments across the country. Another was a look back at about 11,000 respiratory specimens col- lected in January and February. A third was a genetic analysis of viruses taken from patients in California, Wash- ington and the Northeast. Finally, autopsy findings from California also fit the theory.

T he new coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China, late last year. The first U.S. infection identified was a traveler — a Washington state man who returned from Wuhan on Jan. 15 and sought help at a clinic Jan. 19.

The White House announced a ban on travelers from China on Jan. 31, with implementation beginning on Feb. 3. Before that, some travelers were screened for symptoms at some airports. Only later did health officials realize the virus could spread before symptoms show up, rendering symptom-based screening imperfect.

White House officials in February declared the virus was contained and not a current risk to the American public. Until late February, coronavirus infections were too rarely diagnosed by emergency departments to be identified as a growing epidemic, the study found.

But limited spread in some communities was occurring in late January and early February, the study found.

Early instances of infection were found in the11,000 airway samples collected from six states. The earliest was in a sample collected Feb. 21 in the Seattle area.

Genetic analysis from early cases suggest a single lineage of virus from China began spreading in the United States between Jan. 18 and Feb. 9.

One of the report’s authors, Trevor Bedford of Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, has been tracking the pandemic using the virus’s genetic code. He said Friday there could have been a few undetected cases of the coronavirus in the U.S. in December or January, but flu season was at its height.

“Based on just symptoms in January, it’s almost certainly flu or another respiratory infection,” Bedford said.