Novel coronavirus may have spread in U.S. for six weeks – media

U.S. researchers said the novel coronavirus may have been spreading in the Washington state for six weeks after they examined the genomes of two infections in the state, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

Trevor Bedford, an associate professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington, said those two people live in the same county but are not known to have had contact with one another.

The genetic findings suggest that

the virus has been spreading through other people in the community for nearly six weeks, according to Bedford.

One of the two cases was reported on Jan. 20 while the other announced on Friday. The latter was more likely to be descended from that first case since in both cases the virus contained a genetic variation that appears to be rare. It was found in only two of the 59 samples whose sequences have been shared from China, according to Bedford.

“It’s extremely unlikely that two viruses coming from outside the U.S.A. independently would arrive in the same geographical area and be genetically related unless they were connected,”