First US COVID-19 Deaths Happened Weeks Earlier than Thought

Autopsies recently carried out in California show that one person died of the disease on February 6—three weeks before the nation recorded its first fatality.

Written byCatherine Offord

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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 ...

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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