Just over a year since the first deaths due to COVID-19 in the U.S. were recorded, there’s still uncertainty about the accuracy of those reports.

Initially, a man in Seattle, Washington, who died on 26 February 2020 as a result of the novel coronavirus was thought to be the first in the country.

But was he really? There is certainly room for doubt.

According to a timeline by Derrick Bryson Taylor for the New York Times: “In fact, two people had died earlier, though their COVID-19 diagnoses were not discovered until months later.”

Food for thought. A BBC article from April 2020 reports that two people who died in Santa Clara County, on 6 February and 17 February, were later found to have died with COVID-19.

But it may go back even further. Robert Hart, writing in Forbes, highlights a study by leading researchers, which found “evidence that COVID-19 was present in the U.S. in December 2019, weeks earlier than previously thought and before even the first cases in Wuhan, China, had been publicly identified. “

This aligned with my own hunch that COVID-19 was present in the U.S. weeks before the ‘official’ first recorded case.

Why am I so sure? I will tell you.

In those weeks, I was on a long-awaited American west coast holiday, including a week of cruising to and from the Mexican Riviera.

When leaving home, I was healthy in a general sense, besides my constant unwanted friend: primary progressive multiple sclerosis - and its resulting disability.

But by the end of the holiday, I was definitely feeling the worse for wear. I was tired and weak, unable to transfer between bed and wheelchair without help. In fact, without the assistance of a cabin steward and one of his colleagues, transfer would have been impossible on a number of occasions.

The cruise ship finally docked back in San Diego, where it had embarked from.

However, on the morning of the flight home, I was too weak to get out of bed. An ambulance was called and soon its crew arrived and took me to hospital.

After an initial assessment in the emergency room, I was transferred to intensive care, with my diagnosis moving from flu, through pneumonia, to sepsis.

Apparently, the symptoms are very similar - especially when you’re not looking for a particular disease or virus.

Treatment included oxygen and various medications, but they didn’t consider COVID-19, as it was not thought to be in the U.S. then.

It is now that I learn about a study which found positive test results, indicating prior exposure to the virus responsible for COVID-19, in samples from California, where I was, in mid-December, when I was there, far earlier than the first recorded U.S. case.

Now that vaccines are in use, despite all the new variants that keep appearing, the worst might very possibly be behind us. Then again, that is what people thought at the first easing of restrictions.

Let’s take it slowly and cautiously this time.