Coronavirus was in New York Weeks Before First Confirmed Cases – Study

(THE NEW YORK TIMES) – The virus came to the New York area mainly from Europe, not Asia, genetic analysis shows, arriving weeks before the first confirmed case.

“The majority is clearly European,” said Harm van Bakel, a geneticist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who co-wrote a study awaiting peer review”.

A separate team at N.Y.U. Grossman School of Medicine came to strikingly similar conclusions, despite studying a different group of cases.

As at April 8, 2020, New York had 81,803 Covid-19 cases, 9,732 recovered and 4,755 dead.