A secret clouded the death of Patricia Dowd in early February.
The San Jose female was a seemingly healthy 57- year-old who exercised regularly, enjoyed her diet and took no medication. She had flu-like symptoms for a couple of days, then appeared to recuperate, a relative stated. Then she was found dead Feb. 6, and the initial offender appeared to be a heart attack.
This week, authorities verified to Dowd’s household that she evaluated positive for the novel coronavirus, making her the first such documented fatality in the nation.
Health authorities in Santa Clara County did not determine Dowd by name, describing the decedent as a 57- year-old woman who passed away at home. The Times separately validated her death from relative.
Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody said the deaths of 3 individuals in the county– one Feb. 6, another Feb. 17, and a 3rd March 6– were evidence that the novel coronavirus arrived in the Bay Location far earlier than anticipated and spread. Formerly, the very first recorded death was outdoors Seattle on Feb. 29.
” None of these cases had a significant travel history,” Cody stated Wednesday of the 3 deaths. “We presume that each of them represent community transmission and that there was some considerable level of virus distributing in our community in early February … and who understands just how much previously.”
Cody described the cases as “iceberg ideas,” a prophecy of a vast and hidden propagation. The individual who passed away on Feb. 17 was a 69- year-old man. The March 6 victim was a 70- year-old male.
Cody said the robust influenza season this winter season, paired with restricted screening and a nascent understanding of the coronavirus, resulted in this late detection.
” It would be challenging to select what was influenza and what was COVID-19,” Cody stated. She credited the county’s medical examiner and health authorities for making the effort to comprehend the virus and assistance find these three deaths.
Member of the family stated Dowd, who worked as manager for semiconductor business, ended up being abnormally ill in late January and was required to cancel plans to go to a weekend funeral service.
After a bout with flu-like signs, nevertheless, she had actually enhanced and was working from house, corresponding with a coworker at about 8 a.m. the day of her death.
About two hours later, her daughter discovered her dead. As family members learned more about the symptoms of the coronavirus, suspicions grew.
Dowd had a history of foreign travel, as did her co-workers at Lam Research study in the Bay Location.
Her brother-in-law, Jeff Macias, said Dowd had planned to take a trip to China later this year and went abroad “several times a year to different worldwide areas.”
” Where did this come from if it wasn’t her traveling?” Macias stated. “Patricia might not be the. It’s simply the earliest we have discovered up until now.”
He added: “Let’s keep looking so we know the level of it– that’s the higher good, for everybody else and my household included.”
Her elder sibling, Rick Cabello, concurred that his sibling’s death was a shock.
Cabello said his sibling was hardworking, devoted and caring. Her only child had actually simply finished college. Dowd had a network of pals that dated to her childhood and her time at St. Francis High School in Mountain View, where the siblings matured.
” She was living the life she should have,” Cabello said.
