As the world becomes most affected by the Corona epidemic, scientists in the United States are beginning to track the way the virus has entered, hoping to obtain information that may help contain it.
However, the search for the source of the virus prompted a US official, who is a doctor at the same time, to question the account that the virus originated in China.
Contrary to the widespread belief that the new Corona virus arrived in the United States recently, the Los Angeles Times newspaper quoted Jeff Smith, chief executive of the Santa Clara County government in California, as believing that the disease had spread “silently” in December last year, a month ago.
At least from monitoring his first infection
“The virus was free in our community, and it may have been around for a long time,” said Smith, who is also a doctor.
Smith said in comments published by the “Los Angeles Times” that the virus had appeared in California “long before what we believed,” indicating that this could return to December, but “we were not able to notice it because it coincided with the flu season.”
This means that the Corona-virus could have arrived in the United States soon after it appeared in China, and at least a month before the first infection was detected in the United States, which was in Washington State.
Indeed, Smith went even further when he added: “This means that the virus was already present in our society, not as the American authorities believe it originated in China and spread from there.”
The official continued: “The symptoms of the Corona-virus are similar to the flu, and if you have a mild role, you may not notice it and you will not go to the doctor.”
Smith pointed to the Sahel region in California as the first possible place for the appearance of Corona, knowing that this region did not record HIV infections until the twenty-seventh of last February.
On Monday evening, the United States recorded 1,509 deaths from the epidemic within a 24-hour total, approximately 1514 deaths, according to data published by Johns Hopkins University.
To date, the Corona virus has killed 23529 people in the United States, the first country in the world in terms of the number of people infected with the deadly virus, as well as in the number of deaths.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency in charge of health safety in the United States, the number of people infected with the new Corona virus in the country has exceeded 550,000.