Was your December fever coronavirus? Health experts say it’s unlikely

WASHINGTON — While the first case of the new coronavirus wasn’t confirmed in the United States until late January, many Americans wonder whether health experts are right and believe their December dry cough and high fever symptoms were misdiagnosed as a common cold instead of COVID-19.

“I did get really sick back in December, the night of my gender reveal. Body aches, dry cough, chills, sore throat, congestion, tiredness etc. It’s so crazy to think that some of us probably already had the virus,” tweeted Karissa Rios, a first-time mother who suffered the symptoms for about a month.

Common symptoms of the coronavirus include a high fever, tiredness, dry cough and shortness of breath, according to the World Health Organization, but some people may also experience nasal congestion, sore throat, and aches and pain.

The United States is the most infected country in the world, with just over 1million confirmed cases, surpassing the previously most affected two: China and Italy, according to John Hopkins University.

Like Rios, many Americans have taken their concerns to social media platforms in hopes of getting some clarity about whether they had coronavirus before the first confirmed case, although health experts around the world have said this is unlikely given the timeline of the viral spread.

While the WHO first received a report regarding the virus outbreak in China on Dec. 31, the first person in China with the virus can be traced back to November 17, according to government data recorded by The South Morning China Post.

Researchers at ETH Zurich, a leading university in the fields of advanced science and technology research, analyzed the genealogy of the virus and suggest the virus originated in China during the first half of November, according to a university statistical study published in March. Researchers placed the most recent common ancestor giving rise to the outbreak outside of China to be about 3 weeks later, in mid-December.

Nexstrain, an open-source project analyzing the public health potential of pathogen genome data, agreed with Swiss researchers and found the common ancestor of the coronavirus was already circulating undetected through Europe and North America by late January.

Georges Benjamin, the executive director of the American Public Health Association, said the virus arrived in the United States by air travel from China, dismantling some theories that argue the virus originated in the United States independently from the situation of China.

For Benjamin and other health experts, it was very clear when people had the flu and when it was the new coronavirus, as they conduct yearly tests to see how long the flu season lasts. During the winter of 2019 into 2020, Benjamin said, the flu was stronger and lasted longer than in the past.

“For me, when I say it’s plausible [that the virus appeared in the U.S. before the first confirmed case] I don’t mean it was here in October, I’m thinking more in late December,” Benjamin said. “[Chinese officials] now think they probably had the outbreak in early December, or even early November. If that’s the case and with as much air traffic there is between the U.S. and China, it’s quite plausible the virus arrived before late January. If there was an infection there, why wouldn’t it come back here?”

People like Rios were most likely experiencing other types of respiratory viruses spreading in the United States throughout December, as they are more prone to spreading during the winter months and new, stronger infections develop every year, Benjamin said.

“There are many new flu-like illnesses that appear every year, it could have been a bad cold,” he said. “We test for flu every year, and a lot of people go to their doctors and get tested, and some of those are false negatives – they had it but the test didn’t pick it up.”

But antibody tests, which analyze blood looking for markers indicative of previous exposure to an infection, will be the only assuring method to be certain of an estimate of when the virus arrived in the United States, according to Benjamin. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that, depending on when a person was infected and when the test was given, test results may not detect antibodies in someone actually infected with COVID-19. 

Earlier this year, an antibody test study that was carried out with around 850 Los Angeles County residents found that up to 5.6% of the population had antibodies for COVID-19, translating to up to 442,000 adults. According to Benjamin, over 70% of the population should have antibodies by the time confinement regulations are left behind and life returns to normal. However, the study has drawn criticism because only people showing symptoms were tested.

Roberto Burioni, a prominent Italian virologist, agreed with Benjamin’s assessment: While it’s likely the virus arrived in Europe and the United States before the first confirmed case, it’s highly unlikely people were infected as far back as December. 

“We can really trace very precisely when the virus arrives in a certain place and when the vitals appear with the molecular analysis techniques,” Burioni said. “What’s likely is that the virus arrived in Italy well before February 20 and it circulated there for a couple of weeks before the first confirmed case.”

At this point, experts agree that someone showing flu-like symptoms in December probably did not have the coronavirus, but more research and additional testing are crucial to obtaining a more definitive answer.