NEW YORK (1010 WINS) – Coronavirus was mainly brought to New York by travelers from Europe, not Asia, and likely spread for weeks before the city had its first official case.
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That’s according to researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, who conducted separate studies leading to similar conclusions, the New York Times reported.
The teams both analyzed coronavirus genomes from New York patients. They found the viruses in early cases were similar to those found in Europe.
But cases in New York also had unique mutations that weren’t seen in other places, the researchers said.
The Mount Sinai team wrote it shows “a period of untracked global transmission between late January to mid-February.”
A Manhattan woman in her 30s was New York’s first official coronavirus patient on March 1, but the research shows coronavirus was likely spreading in New York a couple months ago before a ban on travel from Europe was in place.
Researchers said if the U.S. had started widespread testing earlier, the hidden spread might have been detected.
Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a foremost figure in the fight against coronavirus, said on ABC's "Good Morning America" Thursday that New York City was "seeded" by cases arriving from Italy as the U.S. focused on China.
"We cut off travel from China early and we were seeded with relatively few cases from China but quickly, it switched to Europe, particularly northern Italy, given the air traffic from there," Fauci said.
"It's just not surprising that New York was seeded before they really knew what was going on and that's why they're in the very unfortunate situation they're in now," he said.
More than 7,000 people have died and nearly 150,000 have tested positive for the virus in New York state.