Steve Wozniak. the Apple co-founder, wonders if he and his wife helped introduce the coronavirus to the United States.
Wozniak told KCBS Radio about a trip to Asia in early January. He flew from Hong Kong to the U.S. on January 4 with what he says was the worst flu of his life.
"We certainly would have been tested and quarantined if we came back today," who said that he and his wife Janet Wozniak were coughing and had a sore throat. He added that other passengers on his flight were coughing too.
"But we came back on January 4. There was no recognition of it then," he said. "So we slipped through the cracks. How many people slipped through the cracks?"
At one point, his wife coughed up blood, he said. Medical tests couldn't pinpoint what she had, he said.
"All they could say was that she didn't have anything American. She had a virus, but they didn't know what," Wozniak said.
When more news of the outbreak emerged, he contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to inquire about what ailment had afflicted him. The CDC gave him a boilerplate response and didn't allow him to best tested for the virus, he said.
"We'd love to get tested to say did we have the coronavirus or did we just have some other virulent flu, the worst in our life," said Wozniak.
The tech entrepreneur's upcoming speaking engagements in South Korea and France have been canceled.
But if he had an undiagnosed case of the coronavirus, he wonders if he passed the sickness on to others. He's frequently stopped by strangers to pose for selfies, he said.
"A lot of people barely know they have the symptoms or not even at all, but pass it on."
