Covid 19 pandemic has been one of those few historical events that left United States pretty much on its knees. Even with all its progression on technological front, US’s medical system was overwhelmed once this virus evolved into a mass-scale outbreak, taking a humongous amount of lives in its wake. While USA has been constantly criticized for its handling of the situation, the country did take all the measures they could in terms of lockdowns, aggressive Covid testing, and contact tracing. Nevertheless, the number of cases reported every day remained on a steep rise until the creation of a vaccine. It was truly an unprecedented mess. Now, in the midst of country’s journey towards recovery, a shocking revelation has been made. It’s a revelation, if made early, could have saved so many lives.
According to a National Institute of Health’s research named All of Us Study, Coronavirus was already circulating within the country around Christmas period of 2019. To contextualize it a bit, this was weeks before the first official case of Covid was reported in US. Frozen blood samples taken from people living across 5 states- Illinois, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, and Massachusetts – point towards being infected by Covid 19 days or weeks before a single case was reported in the said states. Out of 24,000 samples that were collected in early 2020, at least 9 showed that the antibodies to the virus were already present in the blood.
“These included individuals with specimens collected January 7 from Illinois, January 8 from Massachusetts, February 3 from Wisconsin, February 15 from Pennsylvania, and March 6 in Mississippi,” the research report stated, detailing the nine samples in question.
As it takes upto 2 weeks to develop any sort of antibodies following the infection, there is strong evidence that some of the Americans had contracted Covid 19 well back in December. However, it must be noted that these findings do not imply that the virus was exponentially expanding its reach during that timeframe. The blood samples indicate a very mild version of Covid 19.
The research group reached any conclusion only after testing every sample twice, therefore ruling out any possibility of a false positive. Even though the December version of virus was seemingly mild, it asserts that a lot of damage could have been prevented, if government had been proactive in its approach.
