A NEWLY released study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that COVID-19 was likely in the United States as early as mid-December 2019, weeks before the virus was first identified in China, presenting the latest evidence that the coronavirus was spreading around the world earlier than previously known.

According to the study published Monday online in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, CDC researchers tested blood samples from 7,389 routine blood donations collected by the American Red Cross from Dec. 13, 2019 to Jan. 17, 2020 for antibodies specific to the novel coronavirus.

COVID-19 infections “may have been present in the U.S. in December 2019,” about a month earlier than the country’s first official case on Jan. 19, the CDC scientists wrote.

In late April, Michael Melham, mayor of Belleville in the U.S. state of New Jersey, said that he had tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies and believed he had contracted the virus in November last year, despite a doctor’s reported assumption that what Melham went through was just flu.

Not merely in the United States, more researches have added to growing evidence that COVID-19 could silently circulate outside of China earlier than previously thought.

In Spain, researchers at the University of Barcelona, one of the country’s most prestigious universities, detected the presence of the virus genome in waste water samples collected March 12, 2019, the university said in a statement in June.

In France, scientists found a man infected with COVID-19 in December last year, roughly a month before the first officially recorded cases in Europe.

Citing a doctor at Avicenne and Jean-Verdier hospitals near Paris, BBC News reported in May that the patient “must have been infected between 14 and 22 December, as coronavirus symptoms take between five and 14 days to appear.”

(Xinhua)