The new study speculates that the new coronavirus may have spread in Los Angeles late last year

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 10 (Xinhua Tan Jingjing Huangheng) The University of California, Los Angeles issued a press release on the 10th, said that since late December last year, the university's medical institutions received a significant increase in the proportion of patients with cough and acute respiratory failure symptoms than in previous years. Researchers speculate that the new coronavirus may have spread in Los Angeles before the first confirmed case in the United States.
at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Washington presented the study in a paper published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. They evaluated more than 10 million patient electronic health records at UCLA-affiliated facilities between December 1, 2019 and February 29, 2020, compared with records from the same period in the previous five years, from outpatient, emergency and inpatient departments.
found that between December 1, 2019 and February 29, 2020, the proportion of patients seeking outpatient care for cough increased abnormally, by more than 50 percent over the same period in the previous five years, equivalent to more than 1,000 cases of abnormality, an abnormal increase that began on December 22, 2019. The proportion of cough patients reported by emergency departments and acute respiratory failure reported by inpatient departments also increased significantly compared to the previous five years.
that even taking into account factors such as changes in patient numbers and seasonal changes, there is still an abnormal increase in cases. This suggests that the new coronavirus may have spread in the U.S. community until the U.S. has clinical knowledge and testing capabilities.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the country's first newly confirmed case of corona on January 21 and the first case of an unknown source of infection on February 26, which is considered an example of the spread of the new coronavirus in the U.S. community.
researchers also say their search for outpatient records using the keyword "cough" may not be clear enough, and that the unusual increase in cases may also include other reasons, such as e-cigarette use and influenza, and may never really confirm whether these increases are new, undetected cases in the Los Angeles area.Joan Elmore, a professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles and one of the authors of the
paper, said the real value of the study was to focus on outpatient data, not just inpatient data, and that the analysis might help identify and track possible new outbreaks in the future.