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A year ago today (January 20), officials identified the first case of COVID-19 in the U.S. Since then, the country has had more than 24.2 million cases and more than 400,000 people are died from the virus.
The first known US case involved a 35-year-old man who traveled to Wuhan, China to visit his family and returned to Washington state on January 15, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. Four days after his return, he went to a Snohomish County emergency care clinic with a cough and what looked like a fever. The clinic and the Washington Department of Health collected samples and notified the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); the CDC confirmed he had COVID-19 a day later, Jan.20.
Although this is the first known case of COVID-19 in the United States, a study suggested that the new coronavirus could have arrived in the country as early as December, Live Science previously reported. By the end of April, the United States had reached 1 million cases of COVID-19, and by November 9, the United States had registered 10 million cases.
Related: 20 of the worst epidemics and pandemics in history
The first known death from COVID-19 in the United States was a 57-year-old woman who died at home in Santa Clara County, California on February 6, 2020, Live Science reported.
As of May 27, COVID-19 had killed 100,000 people in the United States. Four months later, on September 22, the death toll reached 200,000. By mid-December, 300,000 people had died from the virus and in just over a month an additional 100,000 people had died, bringing the country’s total to more than 400,000 COVID-19-related deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Dashboard.
A year after the first officially reported COVID-19 case, the United States faces a skyrocketing number of cases, a relentless death toll and a mutating virus. Scientists have developed vaccines in record time, but state and local authorities have struggled to get those shots in the arms, with only about 15.7 million recorded doses being given to people, according to the CDC.
Today (January 20) is also the day that President-elect Joe Biden takes office. Many are hoping it will correct the United States’ haphazard response to COVID-19. Biden aims to deliver 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to the U.S. population during his first 100 days in office, which Dr.Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says. is possible, according to Reuters.
“The feasibility of his goal is absolutely clear,” Fauci said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Jan. 17. “There is no doubt about it, that it can be done.”
Originally posted on Live Science.
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