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Autopsy reports from Santa Clara County in California have adjusted estimates of the first US fatality from COVID-19 by several weeks. The reports’ findings, announced yesterday (April 21) by the Santa Clara County Department of Public Health, show that one of the county’s residents died at home from COVID-19 on February 6—long before the first US fatality from the disease was reported near Seattle on February 29.
Further autopsies identified COVID-19 in another two people who died in the county on February 17 and March 6. Santa Clara declared its first fatality on March 9.
“This wasn’t recognized because we were having a severe flu season,” Jeff Smith, a physician and the chief executive of Santa Clara County government, tells The Los Angeles Times. “Symptoms are very much like the flu. If you got a mild case of COVID, you didn’t really notice. You didn’t even go ...
