The 49ers' Super Bowl loss may have saved Bay Area lives, UCSF doctor says

Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs shakes hands with Jimmy Garoppolo of the San Francisco 49ers after Super Bowl LIV at Hard Rock Stadium on February 2, 2020 in Miami. Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs shakes hands with Jimmy Garoppolo of the San Francisco 49ers after Super Bowl LIV at Hard Rock Stadium on February 2, 2020 in Miami. Photo: Tom Pennington / Getty Images Photo: Tom Pennington / Getty Images Image 1 of / 27 Caption Close The 49ers' Super Bowl loss may have saved Bay Area lives, UCSF doctor says 1 / 27 Back to Gallery

It's an unexpected silver lining no 49ers fan could have predicted at the time: That heart-breaking Super Bowl loss in February may have actually ended up saving Bay Area lives.

The theory was put forth by UCSF Professor of Medicine and co-lead of the UCSF COVID-19 command center Niraj Sehgal in a department roundtable posted to YouTube.

"With apologies to the 49ers fans, the gift we may have been given was the 49ers losing," Sehgal said. "If you think about what happened that weekend, had the 49ers won and there were parades and parties at that time, that may have had impact that I haven’t seen actually described.

"It’s a date that I will never forget because the Super Bowl Sunday was actually the night that we stood up formally our command center. And the reason for that was another, again it's funny to call it a gift, but we had two of the first patients in the country that required hospitalization. They arrived in the middle of the night. I will never forget sitting in that ambulance bay when those first two patients rolled up."

California reported its first confirmed case of COVID-19 in late January. The hospitalized husband and wife recalled by Sehgal were the first two confirmed cases in Santa Clara County; the county declared a local health emergency on Feb. 3, the day after the 49ers lost to the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIV.

Had the Niners won, the victory parade could have easily had hundreds of thousands of attendees. The Warriors' 2018 NBA championship parade in downtown Oakland drew over one million fans.

Unlike the Bay Area, Kansas City — which did hold a parade — didn't get its first confirmed case of the coronavirus until March 18.

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Katie Dowd is a senior digital editor with SFGATE. Email her: katie.dowd@sfgate.com.