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Two people who died in February in California's Santa Clara County had COVID-19 — weeks earlier than the country's first previously known coronavirus-related death was reported.

Tissue samples from autopsies performed on a 57-year-old woman who died on Feb. 6 and a 69-year-old man who died on Feb. 17 showed that both individuals had COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, county medical officials said.

Previously, the first coronavirus-related death in the country was known to be on Feb. 29, when a man in his fifties died in Washington state.

The two people in Santa Clara County died at home, officials said, "during a time when very limited testing was available only through the CDC." The county coroner sent their tissue samples to the CDC and was informed Tuesday that both had COVID-19.



"What these deaths tell us is that we had community transmission probably to a significant degree far earlier than we had known," Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody told reporters Wednesday. "That indicates that the virus was probably introduced and circulated in the community, again, far earlier than we had known."

Cody said the virus likely had been circulating in the county as early as January, "but we weren't looking for it."

"It may have been part of our influenza numbers because it looks a lot like influenza," she added. "It's really difficult to pick those things apart absent confirmatory testing."