“At this point, it is critical to better understand the silent spread that was happening before the outbreak officially began [in New York],†Snuderl said.
As cases surge in some parts of the country, doctors like Snuderl are working to better understand the early trajectory of the virus in hopes of discovering unseen patterns that could help inform future public health policies.
“I think if we better understand how the disease was spreading early on, when the next thing like this happens, we're going to be better prepared, and we're going to be able to act hopefully faster,†Snuderl said.
City and county medical examiners and coroners are taking up the bulk of this retrospective work, retesting blood and tissue samples preserved from autopsies to potentially uncover cases that may have gone undetected when testing was less available.
“If all I had for information was how many health care workers tested positive and how many people who were really sick test positive, I really have the potential to miss a lot of people out in the community who either aren't that sick or are sick and don't access the health care system,†said Gilson, who oversees the efforts in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, the county with the second-highest number of infections in the state.
Some medical examiners have access to facilities that can test autopsy tissue samples.
“We are still very, very much in the thick of things,†said Andrea Bowers, spokeswoman for the Imperial County Public Health Department
As caseloads swell across the U.S., teams in Washington, Nevada, New Mexico, Massachusetts and Illinois are also re-examining blood and tissue samples to identify any potential COVID-19 cases that were overlooked
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