Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York said Wednesday that the coronavirus may have been in the United States in late 2019.
“They’re now saying that the virus may not have come just in February [or] March, the virus may have come late last year,” the Democrat said at his Wednesday press conference. “They’re doing testing in Chicago now on people who passed last November or December to see if they passed from the COVID virus.”
Cuomo did not specify who was doing the testing.
Other new findings suggest that the virus may have been spreading much earlier than previously thought.
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On Tuesday, France revealed that a patient admitted to the hospital in December with flu-like symptoms had the coronavirus. Researchers were able to test preserved respiratory samples from the patient. Previous tests had shown that the virus arrived in France in January.
In late April, an autopsy in Santa Clara, California, of a person who died on Feb. 6 revealed the presence of the virus. Previously, the first known death in the U.S. from COVID-19 occurred on Feb. 26.
Cuomo made the remarks as he was urging caution about coronavirus statistics. “I think we’re gonna find, when all is said and done, that the numbers are much different than we thought they were,” he said.
