Think you had coronavirus early this year? Here’s what top doc says about that
Were you severely sick in late 2019 or in January and February with symptoms similar to coronavirus?
While many people suspect they may have had COVID-19 before much of California shuttered in March, Fresno County Interim Health Officer Dr. Rais Vohra said it’s unlikely. And, there’s no way to prove it without a time machine.
“We do hear these stories that people thought that they had coronavirus late last year or early this year,” he said. “It’s really going to be hard to tell unless we go back in time and get samples from that time and test them.
“That doesn’t align with how we understand the epidemiology of this illness,” Vohra said. “Certainly, the numbers suggest this illness didn’t create a big burden of viral infection in the U.S. until early March, or maybe early February just depending on where in California people were.”
Plus, he said, hospitals weren’t filling up with patients with coronavirus symptoms earlier in the year.
Vohra pointed out that in Fresno the first cases that were diagnosed were cruise ship passengers who returned.
The antibody test for COVID-19 won’t necessarily give an accurate answer, either, he said, since antibodies wane and the test can pick up other coronaviruses besides COVID-19, which also confuses the picture.
This story was originally published August 26, 2020 at 7:25 AM.