Health officials in California said that two people in the state died with the coronavirus weeks earlier than has previously been reported.
Officials said on Tuesday that the people died in their homes on February 6 and February 17. Previously, the first death in the United States from the virus had been reported on February 29 in Kirkland, Washington.
The new information may shift the timeline of when the virus spread across the United States. Earlier, studies concluded that the coronavirus began to spread in the US around mid-February, and that it entered the region mainly by travelers from Europe.
However, the two victims did not have any known travel history that would have exposed them to the virus, suggesting that they contracted the disease in the community, officials said.
“Each one of those deaths is probably the tip of an iceberg of unknown size”, a health official said.
California has more than 35,600 confirmed coronavirus cases and 1,300 deaths. The state has been under a mandatory stay-at-home order for more than a month.
